Worldwide system of dependencies—colonies, protectorates, and other
territories—that over a span of three centuries came under the British
government.

Territorial acquisition began in the early 17th century with a group
of settlements in North America and West Indian, South Asian, and
African trading posts founded by private individuals and trading
companies. In the 18th century the British took Gibraltar, established
colonies along the Atlantic seacoast of North America and in the
Caribbean Sea, and began to add territory in India. With its victory in
the French and Indian War (1763), the empire secured Canada and the
eastern Mississippi Valley and gained supremacy in India. From the late
18th century it began to build power in Malaya and acquired the Cape of
Good Hope, Ceylon (see Sri Lanka), and Malta. The British settled
Australia in 1788 and subsequently New Zealand. Aden was secured in
1839, and Hong Kong in 1841. Britain went on to control the Suez Canal
(1875–1956). In the 19th-century European partition of Africa, Britain
acquired Nigeria, Egypt, the territories that would become British East
Africa, and part of what would become the Union (later Republic) of
South Africa. After World War I, Britain secured mandates to German East
Africa, part of the Cameroons, part of Togo, German South-West Africa,
Mesopotamia, Palestine, and part of the German Pacific islands. Britain
gradually evolved a system of self-government for some colonies after
the U.S. gained independence, as set forth in Lord Durham’s report of
1839. Dominion status was given to Canada (1867), Australia (1901), New
Zealand (1907), the Union of South Africa (1910), and the Irish Free
State (1921). Britain declared war on Germany in 1914 on behalf of the
entire empire; after World War I the dominions signed the peace treaties
themselves and joined the League of Nations as independent states. In
1931 the Statute of Westminster recognized them as independent countries
“within the British Empire,” referring to the “British Commonwealth of
Nations,” and from 1949, the Commonwealth of Nations. The British
Empire, therefore, developed into the Commonwealth in the mid-20th
century, as former British dependencies obtained sovereignty but
retained ties to the United Kingdom.

Mainhistorical state, United Kingdom

a worldwide system of dependencies—colonies, protectorates, and other
territories—that over a span of some three centuries was brought under
the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and the administration of
the British government. The policy of granting or recognizing
significant degrees of self-government by dependencies, which was
favoured by the far-flung nature of the empire, led to the development
by the 20th century of the notion of a “British Commonwealth,”
comprising largely self-governing dependencies that acknowledged an
increasingly symbolic British sovereignty. The term was embodied in
statute in 1931. Today the Commonwealth includes former elements of the
British Empire in a free association of sovereign states.

Origins of the British EmpireGreat Britain made its first tentative efforts to establish overseas
settlements in the 16th century. Maritime expansion, driven by
commercial ambitions and by competition with France, accelerated in the
17th century and resulted in the establishment of settlements in North
America and the West Indies. By 1670 there were British American
colonies in New England, Virginia, and Maryland and settlements in the
Bermudas, Honduras, Antigua, Barbados, and Nova Scotia. Jamaica was
obtained by conquest in 1655, and the Hudson’s Bay Company established
itself in what became northwestern Canada from the 1670s on. The East
India Company began establishing trading posts in India in 1600, and the
Straits Settlements (Penang, Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan) became
British through an extension of that company’s activities. The first
permanent British settlement on the African continent was made at James
Island in the Gambia River in 1661. Slave trading had begun earlier in
Sierra Leone, but that region did not become a British possession until
1787. Britain acquired the Cape of Good Hope (now in South Africa) in
1806, and the South African interior was opened up by Boer and British
pioneers under British control.

Nearly all these early settlements arose from the enterprise of
particular companies and magnates rather than from any effort on the
part of the English crown. The crown exercised some rights of
appointment and supervision, but the colonies were essentially
self-managing enterprises. The formation of the empire was thus an
unorganized process based on piecemeal acquisition, sometimes with the
British government being the least willing partner in the enterprise.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the crown exercised control over its
colonies chiefly in the areas of trade and shipping. In accordance with
the mercantilist philosophy of the time, the colonies were regarded as a
source of necessary raw materials for England and were granted
monopolies for their products, such as tobacco and sugar, in the British
market. In return, they were expected to conduct all their trade by
means of English ships and to serve as markets for British manufactured
goods. The Navigation Act of 1651 and subsequent acts set up a closed
economy between Britain and its colonies; all colonial exports had to be
shipped on English ships to the British market, and all colonial imports
had to come by way of England. This arrangement lasted until the
combined effects of the Scottish economist Adam Smith’s Wealth of
Nations (1776), the loss of the American colonies, and the growth of a
free-trade movement in Britain slowly brought it to an end in the first
half of the 19th century.

The slave trade acquired a peculiar importance to Britain’s colonial
economy in the Americas, and it became an economic necessity for the
Caribbean colonies and for the southern parts of the future United
States. Movements for the end of slavery came to fruition in British
colonial possessions long before the similar movement in the United
States; the trade was abolished in 1807 and slavery itself in Britain’s
dominions in 1833.

Competition with FranceBritish military and naval power, under the leadership of such men as
Robert Clive, James Wolfe, and Eyre Coote, gained for Britain two of the
most important parts of its empire—Canada and India. Fighting between
the British and French colonies in North America was endemic in the
first half of the 18th century, but the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which
ended the Seven Years’ War (known as the French and Indian War in North
America), left Britain dominant in Canada. In India, the East India
Company was confronted by the French Compagnie des Indes, but Robert
Clive’s military victories against the French and the rulers of Bengal
in the 1750s provided the British with a massive accession of territory
and ensured their future supremacy in India.

The loss of Britain’s 13 American colonies in 1776–83 was compensated
by new settlements in Australia from 1788 and by the spectacular growth
of Upper Canada (now Ontario) after the emigration of loyalists from
what had become the United States. The Napoleonic Wars provided further
additions to the empire; the Treaty of Amiens (1802) made Trinidad and
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) officially British, and in the Treaty of Paris
(1814) France ceded Tobago, Mauritius, Saint Lucia, and Malta. Malacca
joined the empire in 1795, and Sir Stamford Raffles acquired Singapore
in 1819. Canadian settlements in Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia
extended British influence to the Pacific, while further British
conquests in India brought in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and
the Central Provinces, East Bengal, and Assam.

Dominance and dominionsThe 19th century marked the full flower of the British Empire.
Administration and policy changed during the century from the haphazard
arrangements of the 17th and 18th centuries to the sophisticated system
characteristic of Joseph Chamberlain’s tenure (1895–1900) in the
Colonial Office. That office, which began in 1801, was first an
appendage of the Home Office and the Board of Trade, but by the 1850s it
had become a separate department with a growing staff and a continuing
policy; it was the means by which discipline and pressure were exerted
on the colonial governments when such action was considered necessary.

New Zealand became officially British in 1840, after which systematic
colonization there followed rapidly. Partly owing to pressure from
missionaries, British control was extended to Fiji, Tonga, Papua, and
other islands in the Pacific Ocean, and in 1877 the British High
Commission for the Western Pacific Islands was created. In the wake of
the Indian Mutiny (1857), the British crown assumed the East India
Company’s governmental authority in India. Britain’s acquisition of
Burma (Myanmar) was completed in 1886, while its conquest of the Punjab
(1849) and of Balochistān (1854–76) provided substantial new territory
in the Indian subcontinent itself. The French completion of the Suez
Canal (1869) provided Britain with a much shorter sea route to India.
Britain responded to this opportunity by expanding its port at Aden,
establishing a protectorate in Somaliland (now Somalia), and extending
its influence in the sheikhdoms of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf.
Cyprus, which was, like Gibraltar and Malta, a link in the chain of
communication with India through the Mediterranean, was occupied in
1878. Elsewhere, British influence in the Far East expanded with the
development of the Straits Settlements and the federated Malay states,
and in the 1880s protectorates were formed over Brunei and Sarawak. Hong
Kong island became British in 1841, and an “informal empire” operated in
China by way of British treaty ports and the great trading city of
Shanghai.

The greatest 19th-century extension of British power took place in
Africa, however. Britain was the acknowledged ruling force in Egypt from
1882 and in the Sudan from 1899. In the second half of the century, the
Royal Niger Company began to extend British influence in Nigeria, and
the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and The Gambia also became British
possessions. The Imperial British East Africa Company operated in what
are now Kenya and Uganda, and the British South Africa Company operated
in what are now Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia), Zambia (formerly
Northern Rhodesia), and Malaŵi. Britain’s victory in the South African
War (1899–1902) enabled it to annex the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State in 1902 and to create the Union of South Africa in 1910. The
resulting chain of British territories stretching from South Africa
northward to Egypt realized an enthusiastic British public’s idea of an
African empire extending “from the Cape to Cairo.” By the end of the
19th century, the British Empire comprised nearly one-quarter of the
world’s land surface and more than one-quarter of its total population.

The idea of limited self-government for some of Britain’s colonies
was first recommended for Canada by Lord Durham in 1839. This report
proposed “responsible self-government” for Canada, so that a cabinet of
ministers chosen by the Canadians could exercise executive powers
instead of officials chosen by the British government. The cabinet would
depend primarily on support by the colonial legislative assembly for its
tenure of ministerial office. Decisions on foreign affairs and defense,
however, would still be made by a governor-general acting on orders from
the British government in London. The system whereby some colonies were
allowed largely to manage their own affairs under governors appointed by
the mother country spread rapidly. In 1847 it was put into effect in the
colonies in Canada, and it was later extended to the Australian
colonies, New Zealand, and to the Cape Colony and Natal in southern
Africa. These colonies obtained such complete control over their
internal affairs that in 1907 they were granted the new status of
dominions. In 1910 another dominion, the Union of South Africa, was
formed from the Cape Colony, Natal, and the former Boer republics of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

This select group of nations within the empire, with substantial
European populations and long experience of British forms and practices,
was often referred to as the British Commonwealth. The demands and
stresses of World War I and its aftermath led to a more formal
recognition of the special status of the dominions. When Britain had
declared war on Germany in 1914 it was on behalf of the entire empire,
the dominions as well as the colonies. But after World War I ended in
1918, the dominions signed the peace treaties for themselves and joined
the newly formed League of Nations as independent states equal to
Britain. In 1931 the Statute of Westminster recognized them as
independent countries “within the British Empire, equal in status” to
the United Kingdom. The statute referred specifically to the “British
Commonwealth of Nations.” When World War II broke out in 1939, the
dominions made their own declarations of war.

The rest of the British Empire consisted for the most part of
colonies and other dependencies whose predominant indigenous populations
had no such experience. For them a variety of administrative techniques
was tried, ranging from the sophisticated Indian Civil Service, with its
largely effective adoption of native practices in civil law and
administration, to the very loose and indirect supervision exercised in
a number of African territories, where settlers and commercial interests
were left much to themselves while native Africans were segregated into
“reserves.”

Nationalism and the CommonwealthNationalist sentiment developed rapidly in many of these areas after
World War I and even more so after World War II, with the result that,
beginning with India in 1947, independence was granted them, along with
the option of retaining an association with Great Britain and other
former dependencies in the Commonwealth of Nations (the adjective
“British” was not used officially after 1946). Indian and Pakistani
independence was followed by that of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma
(Myanmar) in 1948. The Gold Coast became the first sub-Saharan African
colony to reach independence (as Ghana) in 1957. The movement of
Britain’s remaining colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean toward
self-government gained speed in the years after 1960 as international
pressure mounted (especially at the United Nations), as the notion of
independence spread in the colonies themselves, and as the British
public, which was no longer actively imperial in its sentiments,
accepted the idea of independence as a foregone conclusion.

The last significant British colony, Hong Kong, was returned to
Chinese sovereignty in 1997. By then, virtually nothing remained of the
empire. The Commonwealth, however, remained a remarkably flexible and
durable institution.

United Kingdom

OverviewIsland country, western Europe, North Atlantic Ocean.

It comprises Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) and
Northern Ireland. Area: 93,788 sq mi (242,910 sq km). Population (2005
est.): 60,020,000. Capital: London. The population is composed of
English (major ethnic group), Scots, Irish, and Welsh and immigrants and
their descendants from India, the West Indies, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and
Africa. Languages: English (official); also Welsh, Scottish Gaelic.
Religions: Christianity (Protestant [Church of England—established;
Church of Scotland—national], Roman Catholic, other Christians); also
Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism. Currency: pound sterling. The country
has hill, lowland, upland, highland, and mountain regions. Tin and iron
ore deposits, once central to the economy, have become exhausted or
uneconomical, and the coal industry, long a staple of the economy, began
a steady decline in the 1950s that worsened with pit closures in the
1980s. Offshore petroleum and natural gas reserves are significant.
Chief crops are barley, wheat, sugar beets, and potatoes. Major
manufactures include motor vehicles, aerospace equipment, electronic
data-processing and telecommunication equipment, and petrochemicals.
Fishing and publishing also are important economic activities. The U.K.
is a constitutional monarchy with two legislative houses; its chief of
state is the sovereign, and the head of government is the prime
minister.

The early pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain (see Stonehenge) were
Celtic-speaking peoples, including the Brythonic people of Wales, the
Picts of Scotland, and the Britons of Britain. Celts also settled in
Ireland c. 500 bc. Julius Caesar invaded and took control of the area in
55–54 bc. The Roman province of Britannia endured until the 5th century
ad and included present-day England and Wales. Germanic tribes,
including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, invaded Britain in the 5th century.
The invasions had little effect on the Celtic peoples of Wales and
Scotland. Christianity began to flourish in the 6th century. During the
8th and 9th centuries, Vikings, particularly Danes, raided the coasts of
Britain. In the late 9th century Alfred the Great repelled a Danish
invasion, which helped bring about the unification of England under
Athelstan. The Scots attained dominance in Scotland, which was finally
unified under Malcolm II (1005–34). William of Normandy (see William I)
took England in 1066. The Norman kings established a strong central
government and feudal state. The French language of the Norman rulers
eventually merged with the Anglo-Saxon of the common people to form the
English language. From the 11th century, Scotland came under the
influence of the English throne. Henry II conquered Ireland in the late
12th century. His sons Richard I and John had conflicts with the clergy
and nobles, and eventually John was forced to grant the nobles
concessions in the Magna Carta (1215). The concept of community of the
realm developed during the 13th century, providing the foundation for
parliamentary government. During the reign of Edward I (1272–1307),
statute law developed to supplement English common law, and the first
Parliament was convened. In 1314 Robert the Bruce (see Robert I) won
independence for Scotland. The house of Tudor became the ruling family
of England following the Wars of the Roses (1455–85). Henry VIII
(1509–47) established the Church of England and incorporated Wales as
part of England.

The reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) began a period of colonial
expansion; in 1588 British forces defeated the “invincible” Spanish
Armada. In 1603 James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne,
becoming James I, and established a personal union of the two kingdoms.
The English Civil Wars erupted in 1642 between Royalists and
Parliamentarians, ending in the execution of Charles I (1649). After 11
years of Puritan rule under Oliver Cromwell and his son (1649–60), the
monarchy was restored with Charles II. In 1689, following the Glorious
Revolution, Parliament proclaimed the joint sovereigns William III and
Mary II, who accepted the British Bill of Rights. In 1707 England and
Scotland assented to the Act of Union, forming the kingdom of Great
Britain. The Hanoverians ascended the English throne in 1714, when
George Louis, elector of Hanover, became George I of Great Britain.
During the reign of George III, Great Britain’s North American colonies
won independence (1783). This was followed by a period of war
(1789–1815) with Revolutionary France and later with the empire of
Napoleon. In 1801 legislation united Great Britain with Ireland to
create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Britain was the
birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, and it
remained the world’s foremost economic power until the late 19th
century. During the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), Britain’s
colonial expansion reached its zenith, though the older dominions,
including Canada and Australia, were granted independence (1867 and
1901, respectively).

The U.K. entered World War I allied with France and Russia in 1914.
Following the war, revolutionary disorder erupted in Ireland, and in
1921 the Irish Free State (see Ireland) was granted dominion status. Six
counties of Ulster, however, remained in the U.K. as Northern Ireland.
The U.K. entered World War II in 1939. Following the war, the Irish Free
State became the Irish republic and left the Commonwealth. India also
gained independence from the U.K. Throughout the postwar period and into
the 1970s, the U.K. continued to grant independence to its overseas
colonies and dependencies. With UN forces, it participated in the Korean
War (1950–53). In 1956 it intervened militarily in Egypt during the Suez
Crisis. It joined the European Economic Community, a forerunner of the
European Union, in 1973. In 1982 it defeated Argentina in the Falkland
Islands War. As a result of continuing social strife in Northern
Ireland, it joined with Ireland in several peace initiatives, which
eventually resulted in an agreement to establish an assembly in Northern
Ireland. In 1997 referenda approved in Scotland and Wales devolved power
to both countries, though both remained part of the U.K. In 1991 the
U.K. joined an international coalition to reverse Iraq’s conquest of
Kuwait (see Persian Gulf War). In 2003 the U.K. and the U.S. attacked
Iraq and overthrew the government of Ṣaddām Ḥussein (see Iraq War).
Terrorist bombings in London in July 2005 killed more than 50 people.

ProfileOfficial name United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Form of government constitutional monarchy with two legislative houses
(House of Lords [7321]; House of Commons [646])
Chief of state Sovereign
Head of government Prime Minister
Capital London
Official language English; both English and Welsh in Wales
Official religion 2
Monetary unit pound sterling (£)
Population estimate (2008) 61,446,000
Total area (sq mi) 93,851
Total area (sq km) 243,073
1As of December 2008 including 92 hereditary peers, 614 life peers, and
26 archbishops and bishops.

2Church of England “established” (protected by the state but not
“official”); Church of Scotland “national” (exclusive jurisdiction in
spiritual matters per Church of Scotland Act 1921); no established
church in Northern Ireland or Wales.

Main

island country located off the northwestern coast of mainland Europe.
The United Kingdom comprises the whole of the island of Great
Britain—which contains England, Wales, and Scotland—as well as the
northern portion of the island of Ireland. The name Britain is sometimes
used to refer to the United Kingdom as a whole. The capital is London,
which is among the world’s leading commercial, financial, and cultural
centres. Other major cities include Birmingham, Liverpool, and
Manchester in England, Belfast and Londonderry in Northern Ireland,
Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, and Swansea and Cardiff in Wales.

The origins of the United Kingdom can be traced to the time of the
Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan, who in the early 10th century ad secured the
allegiance of neighbouring Celtic kingdoms and became “the first to rule
what previously many kings shared between them,” in the words of a
contemporary chronicle. Through subsequent conquest over the following
centuries, kingdoms lying farther afield came under English dominion.
Wales, a congeries of Celtic kingdoms lying in Great Britain’s
southwest, was formally united with England by the Acts of Union of 1536
and 1542; Scotland, ruled by an English monarch since 1603, formally was
joined with England and Wales in 1707 to form the United Kingdom of
Great Britain. (The adjective “British” came into use at this time to
refer to all the kingdom’s peoples.) Ireland came under English control
during the 1600s and was formally united with Great Britain through the
Act of Union of 1800. The republic of Ireland gained its independence in
1922, but the six counties of Ulster remained part of the United Kingdom
as Northern Ireland. Relations between these constituent states and
England have been marked by controversy and, at times, open rebellion
and even warfare. These tensions relaxed somewhat during the late 20th
century, when devolved assemblies were introduced in Northern Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales. Nonetheless, even with the establishment of a
power-sharing assembly after referenda in both Northern Ireland and the
Irish republic, relations between Northern Ireland’s unionists (who
favour continued British sovereignty over Northern Ireland) and
nationalists (who favour unification with the republic of Ireland)
remained tense into the 21st century.

The United Kingdom has made significant contributions to the world
economy, especially in technology and industry. Since World War II,
however, the United Kingdom’s most prominent exports have been cultural,
including literature, theatre, film, television, and popular music that
draw on all parts of the country. Perhaps Britain’s greatest export has
been the English language, now spoken in every corner of the world as
one of the leading international mediums of cultural and economic
exchange.

The United Kingdom retains links with parts of its former empire
through the Commonwealth. It also benefits from historical and cultural
links with the United States and is a member of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO). Moreover, the United Kingdom is a member of
the European Union, if a sometimes reluctant one. Many of its people
hold to the sentiments of the great wartime prime minister Winston
Churchill, who sonorously remarked, “We see nothing but good and hope in
a richer, freer, more contented European commonalty. But we have our own
dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are
linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not
absorbed.” Yet a cosmopolitan, resolutely multicultural United
Kingdom—incorporating African, Caribbean, and Asian as well as
Anglo-Saxon and Celtic influences—is now firmly joined to the European
continent, and the country’s former insularity—both literal and
metaphorical—and sense of exceptionalism have at least for many given
way to a new vision of its place in the world, which continues to be an
important one.

Ralph Charles Atkins
Ed.

LandThe United Kingdom comprises four geographic and historical
parts—England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom
contains most of the area and population of the British Isles—the
geographic term for the group of islands that includes Great Britain,
Ireland, and many smaller islands. Together England, Wales, and Scotland
constitute Great Britain, the larger of the two principal islands, while
Northern Ireland and the republic of Ireland constitute the second
largest island, Ireland. England, occupying most of southern Great
Britain, includes the Isles of Scilly off the southwest coast and the
Isle of Wight off the southern coast. Scotland, occupying northern Great
Britain, includes the Orkney and Shetland islands off the northern coast
and the Hebrides off the northwestern coast. Wales lies west of England
and includes the island of Anglesey to the northwest.

Apart from the land border with the Irish republic, the United
Kingdom is surrounded by sea. To the south of England and between the
United Kingdom and France is the English Channel. The North Sea lies to
the east. To the west of Wales and northern England and to the southeast
of Northern Ireland, the Irish Sea separates Great Britain from Ireland,
while southwestern England, the northwestern coast of Northern Ireland,
and western Scotland face the Atlantic Ocean. At its widest the United
Kingdom is 300 miles (500 km) across. From the northern tip of Scotland
to the southern coast of England, it is about 600 miles (1,000 km). No
part is more than 75 miles (120 km) from the sea. The capital, London,
is situated on the tidal River Thames in southeastern England.

The archipelago formed by Great Britain and the numerous smaller
islands is as irregular in shape as it is diverse in geology and
landscape. This diversity stems largely from the nature and disposition
of the underlying rocks, which are westward extensions of European
structures, with the shallow waters of the Strait of Dover and the North
Sea concealing former land links. Northern Ireland contains a westward
extension of the rock structures of Scotland. These common rock
structures are breached by the narrow North Channel.

On a global scale, this natural endowment covers a small
area—approximating that of the U.S. state of Oregon or the African
country of Guinea—and its internal diversity, accompanied by rapid
changes of often beautiful scenery, may convey to visitors from larger
countries a striking sense of compactness and consolidation. The peoples
who, over the centuries, have hewed an existence from this Atlantic
extremity of Eurasia have put their own imprint on the environment, and
the ancient and distinctive palimpsest of their field patterns and
settlements complements the natural diversity.

ReliefGreat Britain is traditionally divided into a highland and a lowland
zone. A line running from the mouth of the River Exe, in the southwest,
to that of the Tees, in the northeast, is a crude expression of this
division. The course of the 700-foot (213-metre) contour, or of the
boundary separating the older rocks of the north and west from the
younger southeastern strata, provides a more accurate indication of the
extent of the highlands.

The highland zone The creation of the highlands was a long process, yet elevations,
compared with European equivalents, are low, with the highest summit,
Ben Nevis, only 4,406 feet (1,343 metres) above sea level. In addition,
the really mountainous areas above 2,000 feet (600 metres) often form
elevated plateaus with relatively smooth surfaces, reminders of the
effects of former periods of erosion.

Scotland’s three main topographic regions follow the
northeast-to-southwest trend of the ancient underlying rocks. The
northern Highlands and the Southern Uplands are separated by the
intervening rift valley, or subsided structural block, called the
Midland Valley (or Central Lowlands). The core of the Highlands is the
elevated, worn-down surface of the Grampian Mountains, 1,000–3,600 feet
(300–1,100 metres) above sea level, with the Cairngorm Mountains rising
to elevations of more than 4,000 feet (1,200 metres). This majestic
mountain landscape is furrowed by numerous wide valleys, or straths.
Occasional large areas of lowland, often fringed with long lines of sand
dunes, add variety to the east. The Buchan peninsula, the Moray Firth
estuarine flats, and the plain of Caithness—all low-lying areas—contrast
sharply with the mountain scenery and show smoother outlines than do the
glacier-scoured landscapes of the west, where northeast-facing hollows,
or corries, separated by knife-edge ridges and deep glens, sculpt the
surfaces left by earlier erosion. The many freshwater lochs (lakes)
further enhance a landscape of wild beauty. The linear Glen Mor—where
the Caledonian Canal now threads the chain of lakes that includes Loch
Ness—is the result of a vast structural sideways tear in the whole mass
of the North West Highlands. To the northwest of Glen Mor stretches land
largely divided among agricultural smallholdings, or crofts; settlement
is intermittent and mostly coastal, a pattern clearly reflecting the
pronounced dissection of a highland massif that has been scored and
plucked by the Ice Age glaciers. Many sea-drowned, glacier-widened river
valleys (fjords) penetrate deeply into the mountains, the outliers of
which rise from the sea in stately, elongated peninsulas or emerge in
hundreds of offshore islands.

In comparison with the Scottish Highlands, the Southern Uplands of
Scotland present a more subdued relief, with elevations that never
exceed 2,800 feet (850 metres). The main hill masses are the Cheviots,
which reach 2,676 feet (816 metres) in elevation, while only Merrick and
Broad Law have elevations above the 2,700-foot (830-metre) contour line.
Broad plateaus separated by numerous dales characterize these uplands,
and in the west most of the rivers flow across the prevailing
northeast-southwest trend, following the general slope of the plateau,
toward the Solway Firth or the Firth of Clyde. Bold masses of granite
and the rugged imprint of former glaciers occasionally engender
mountainous scenery. In the east the valley network of the River Tweed
and its many tributaries forms a broad lowland expanse between the
Lammermuir and Cheviot hills.

The Midland Valley lies between great regular structural faults. The
northern boundary with the Highlands is a wall-like escarpment, but the
boundary with the Southern Uplands is sharp only near the coast. This
vast trench is by no means a continuous plain, for high ground—often
formed of sturdy, resistant masses of volcanic rock—meets the eye in all
directions, rising above the low-lying areas that flank the rivers and
the deeply penetrating estuaries of the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of
Forth.

In Northern Ireland, structural extensions of the Scottish Highlands
reappear in the generally rugged mountain scenery and in the
peat-covered summits of the Sperrin Mountains, which reach an elevation
of 2,241 feet (683 metres). The uplands in the historic counties Down
and Armagh are the western continuation of Scotland’s Southern Uplands
but reach elevations of more than 500 feet (150 metres) only in limited
areas; the one important exception is the Mourne Mountains, a lovely
cluster of granite summits the loftiest of which, Slieve Donard, rises
to an elevation of 2,789 feet (850 metres) within 2 miles (3.2 km) of
the sea. In the central region of Northern Ireland that corresponds to
Scotland’s Midland Valley, an outpouring of basaltic lavas has formed a
huge plateau, much of which is occupied by the shallow Lough Neagh, the
largest freshwater lake in the British Isles.

The highland zone of England and Wales consists, from north to south,
of four broad upland masses: the Pennines, the Cumbrian Mountains, the
Cambrian Mountains, and the South West Peninsula. The Pennines are
usually considered to end in the north at the River Tyne gap, but the
surface features of several hills in Northumberland are in many ways
similar to those of the northern Pennines. The general surface of the
asymmetrically arched backbone (anticline) of the Pennines is remarkably
smooth because many of the valleys, though deep, occupy such a small
portion of the total area that the windswept moorland between them
appears almost featureless. This is particularly true of the landscape
around Alston, in Cumbria (Cumberland), which—cut off by faults on its
north, west, and south sides—stands out as an almost rectangular block
of high moorland plateau with isolated peaks (known to geographers as
monadnocks) rising up above it. Farther south, deep and scenic dales
(valleys) dissect the Pennine plateau. The dales’ craggy sides are
formed of millstone grit, and beneath them flow streams stepped by
waterfalls. The most southerly part of the Pennines is a grassy upland.
More than 2,000 feet (610 metres) above sea level in places, it is
characterized by the dry valleys, steep-sided gorges, and underground
streams and caverns of a limestone drainage system rather than the bleak
moorland that might be expected at this elevation. At lower levels the
larger dales are more richly wooded, and the trees stand out against a
background of rugged cliffs of white-gray rocks. On both Pennine flanks,
older rocks disappear beneath younger layers, and the uplands merge into
flanking coastal lowlands.

The Cumbrian Mountains, which include the famous Lake District
celebrated in poetry by William Wordsworth and the other Lake poets,
constitute an isolated, compact mountain group to the west of the
northern Pennines. Many deep gorges, separated by narrow ridges and
sharp peaks, characterize the northern Cumbrian Mountains, which consist
of tough slate rock. Greater expanses of level upland, formed from thick
beds of lava and the ash thrown out by ancient volcanoes, lie to the
south. The volcanic belt is largely an irregular upland traversed by
deep, narrow valleys, and it includes England’s highest point, Scafell
Pike, with an elevation of 3,210 feet (978 metres), and Helvellyn, at
3,116 feet (950 metres). Nine rivers flowing out in all directions from
the centre of this uplifted dome form a classic radial drainage pattern.
The valleys, often containing long, narrow lakes, have been widened to a
U shape by glacial action, which has also etched corries from the
mountainsides and deposited the debris in moraines. Glacial action also
created a number of “hanging valleys” by truncating former tributary
valleys.

The Cambrian Mountains, which form the core of Wales, are clearly
defined by the sea except on the eastern side, where a sharp break of
slope often marks the transition to the English lowlands. Cycles of
erosion have repeatedly worn down the ancient and austere surfaces. Many
topographic features derive from glacial processes, and some of the most
striking scenery stems largely from former volcanism. The mountain areas
above 2,000 feet (610 metres) are most extensive in North Wales. These
include Snowdonia—named for Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), the highest point in
Wales, with an elevation of 3,560 feet (1,085 metres)—and its
southeastern extensions, Cader Idris and Berwyn. With the exception of
Plynlimon and the Radnor Forest, central Wales lacks similar high areas,
but the monadnocks of South Wales—notably the Black Mountains and the
Brecon Beacons—stand out in solitary splendour above the upland
surfaces. There are three such surfaces: a high plateau of 1,700 to
1,800 feet (520 to 550 metres); a middle peneplain, or worn-down
surface, of 1,200 to 1,600 feet (370 to 490 metres); and a low peneplain
of 700 to 1,100 feet (210 to 340 metres). These smooth, rounded,
grass-covered moorlands present a remarkably even skyline. Below 700
feet (210 metres) lies a further series of former wave-cut surfaces.
Several valleys radiate from the highland core to the coastal regions.
In the west these lowlands have provided a haven for traditional Welsh
culture, but the deeply penetrating eastern valleys have channeled
English culture into the highland. A more extensive lowland—physically
and structurally an extension of the English lowlands—borders the
Bristol Channel in the southeast. The irregularities of the 600-mile
(970-km) Welsh coast show differing adjustments to the pounding attack
of the sea.

The South West—England’s largest peninsula—has six conspicuous
uplands: Exmoor, where Dunkery Beacon reaches an elevation of 1,704 feet
(519 metres); the wild, granite uplands of Dartmoor, which reach 2,038
feet (621 metres) at High Willhays; Bodmin Moor; Hensbarrow; Carn Brea;
and the Penwith upland that forms the spectacular extremity of Land’s
End. Granite reappears above the sea in the Isles of Scilly, 28 miles
(45 km) farther southwest. Despite the variation in elevation, the
landscape in the South West, like that of so many other parts of the
United Kingdom, has a quite marked uniformity of summit heights, with a
high series occurring between 1,000 and 1,400 feet (300 and 430 metres),
a middle group between 700 and 1,000 feet (210 and 300 metres), and
coastal plateaus ranging between 200 and 400 feet (60 and 120 metres). A
network of deep, narrow valleys alternates with flat-topped, steplike
areas rising inland. The South West derives much of its renowned
physical attraction from its peninsular nature; with both dramatic
headlands and magnificent drowned estuaries created by sea-level
changes, the coastline is unsurpassed for its diversity.

The lowland zoneGauged by the 700-foot (210-metre) contour line, the lowland zone starts
around the Solway Firth in the northwest, with a strip of low-lying
ground extending up the fault-directed Vale of Eden (the valley of the
River Eden). Southward the narrow coastal plain bordering the Lake
District broadens into the flat, glacial-drift-covered Lancashire and
Cheshire plains, with their slow-flowing rivers. East of the Pennine
ridge the lowlands are continuous, except for the limestone plateau
north of the River Tees and, to the south, the North York Moors, with
large exposed tracts that have elevations of more than 1,400 feet (430
metres). West of the North York Moors lies the wide Vale of York, which
merges with the east Midland plain to the south. The younger rocks of
the Midlands terminate at the edge of the Cambrian Mountains to the
west. The lowland continues southward along the flat landscapes
bordering the lower River Severn, becomes constricted by the complex
Bristol-Mendip upland, and opens out once more into the extensive and
flat plain of Somerset. The eastern horizon of much of the Midland plain
is the scarp face of the Cotswolds, part of the discontinuous outcrop of
limestones and sandstones that arcs from the Dorset coast in southern
England as far as the Cleveland Hills on the north coast of Yorkshire.
The more massive limestones and sandstones give rise to noble 1,000-foot
(300-metre) escarpments, yet the dip slope is frequently of such a low
angle that the countryside resembles a dissected plateau, passing
gradually on to the clay vales of Oxford, White Horse, Lincoln, and
Pickering. The flat, often reclaimed landscapes of the once-marshy Fens
are also underlain by these clays, and the next scarp, the
western-facing chalk outcrop (cuesta), undergoes several marked
directional changes in the vicinity of the Wash, a shallow arm of the
North Sea.

The chalk scarp is a more conspicuous and continuous feature than the
sandstone and limestone outcrops farther west. It begins in the north
with the open rolling country known as the Yorkshire Wolds, where
elevations of 750 feet (230 metres) occur. It is breached by the River
Humber and then continues in the Lincolnshire Wolds. East of the Fens
the scarp is very low, barely attaining 150 feet (45 metres), but it
then rises gradually to the 807-foot (246-metre) Ivinghoe Beacon in the
attractive Chiltern Hills. Several wind gaps, or former river courses,
interrupt the scarp, and the River Thames actually cuts through it in
the Goring Gap. Where the dip slope of the chalk is almost horizontal,
as in the open Salisbury Plain, the landscape forms a large dissected
plateau with an elevation of 350 to 500 feet (110 to 150 metres). The
main valleys contain rivers, while the other valleys remain dry.

The chalk outcrop continues into Dorset, but in the south the chalk
has been folded along west-to-east lines. Downfolds, subsequently filled
in by geologically recent sands and clays, now floor the London and
Hampshire basins. The former, an asymmetrical synclinal (or structurally
downwarped) lowland rimmed by chalk, is occupied mainly by gravel
terraces and valley-side benches and has relatively little floodplain;
the latter is similarly cradled by a girdle of chalk, but the southern
rim, or monocline, has been cut by the sea in two places to form the
scenic Isle of Wight.

Between these two synclinal areas rises the anticlinal, or
structurally upwarped, dome of the Weald of Kent and Sussex. The arch of
this vast geologic upfold has long since been eroded away, and the
bounding chalk escarpments of the North and South Downs are therefore
inward-facing and enclose a concentric series of exposed clay vales and
sandstone ridges. On the coast the waters of the English Channel have
undermined and eroded the upfold to produce a dazzling succession of
chalk cliffs facing the European mainland, 21 miles (34 km) distant at
the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel.

DrainageThe main drainage divide in Great Britain runs from north to south,
keeping well to the west until the basin of the River Severn.
Westward-flowing streams empty into the Atlantic Ocean or Irish Sea over
relatively short distances. The Clyde in Scotland, the Eden and Mersey
in northwestern England, and the Dee, Teifi, and Tywi in Wales are the
only significant westward-flowing rivers north of the Severn estuary.
The drainage complex that debouches into the Severn estuary covers a
large part of Wales and the South West and West Midlands of England. To
the south the Avon (flowing through Bristol) and the Parret watershed
extend somewhat to the east, but subsequently, with the exception of the
Taw and Torridge valleys, they run very close to the western coast in
Devon and Cornwall.

The rivers draining east from the main divide are longer, and several
coalesce into wide estuaries. The fast-flowing Spey, Don, Tay, Forth,
and Tweed of eastern Scotland run generally across impermeable rocks,
and their discharges increase rapidly after rain. From the northern
Pennines the Tyne, Wear, and Tees flow independently to the North Sea,
but thereafter significant estuary groupings occur. A number of
rivers—including the Ouse, Aire, and Trent—drain into the Humber after
they leave the Pennines. To the south another group of rivers (including
the Ouse, Welland, and Nene) enters the Wash after sluggishly draining a
large, flat countryside. The large drainage complex of the River Thames
dominates southeastern England. Its source is in the Cotswolds, and,
after receiving many tributaries as it flows over the Oxford Clay, the
mainstream breaches the chalk escarpment in the Goring Gap. A number of
tributaries add their discharges farther downstream, and the total area
draining into the Thames estuary is nearly 4,000 square miles (10,000
square km). The important rivers flowing into the English Channel are
the Tamar, Exe, Avon, Test, Arun, and Ouse. The major rivers in Northern
Ireland are the Erne, Foyle, and Bann.

SoilsThe regional pattern of soil formation correlates with local variations
of relief and climate. Although changes are gradual and soils can vary
locally, a division of Britain into four climatic regimes largely
explains the distribution of soils.

At the higher altitudes of the highland zone, particularly in
Scotland, the weather is characterized by a cold, wet regime of more
than 40 inches (1,000 mm) rainfall and less than 47 °F (8 °C) mean
temperature annually; these areas have blanket peat and peaty podzol
soils, with their organic surface layer resting on a gray, leached base.
A regime similarly wet but with a mean annual temperature exceeding 47
°F characterizes most of the remainder of the highland zone,
particularly on the lower parts of the Southern Uplands, the Solway
Firth–Lake District area, the peripheral plateaus of Wales, and most of
southwestern England. These areas are covered by acid brown soils and
weakly podzolized associates. On the lower-lying areas within the
highland zone, particularly in eastern Scotland and the eastern flanks
of the Pennines, a relatively cold, dry regime gives rise to soils
intermediate between the richer brown earths and the podzols.

Over the entire lowland zone, which also has a mean annual
temperature above 47 °F but less than 40 inches of rainfall, leached
brown soils are characteristic. Calcareous, and thus alkaline, parent
materials are widespread, particularly in the southeast, so acid soils
and podzols are confined to the most quartz-laden parent materials. In
Northern Ireland at elevations of about 460 feet (140 metres), brown
earths give way to semipodzols, and these grade upslope into more
intensively leached podzols, particularly in the Sperrins and the
Mournes. Between these mountains in the Lough Neagh lowland, rich brown
earth soils predominate.

ClimateThe climate of the United Kingdom derives from its setting within
atmospheric circulation patterns and from the position of its landforms
in relation to the sea. Regional diversity does exist, but the
boundaries of major world climatic systems do not pass through the
country. Britain’s marginal position between the European landmass to
the east and the ever-present relatively warm Atlantic waters to the
west exposes the country to air masses with a variety of thermal and
moisture characteristics. The main types of air masses, according to
their source regions, are polar and tropical; by their route of travel,
both the polar and tropical may be either maritime or continental. For
much of the year, the weather depends on the sequence of disturbances
within the midlatitude westerlies that bring in mostly polar maritime
and occasionally tropical maritime air. In winter occasional
high-pressure areas to the east allow biting polar continental air to
sweep over Britain. All of these atmospheric systems tend to fluctuate
rapidly in their paths and to vary both in frequency and intensity by
season and also from year to year. Variability is characteristic of
British weather, and extreme conditions, though rare, can be very
important for the life of the country.

The polar maritime winds that reach the United Kingdom in winter
create a temperature distribution that is largely independent of
latitude. Thus, the north-to-south run of the 40 °F (4 °C) January
isotherm, or line of equal temperature, from the coast in northwestern
Scotland south to the Isle of Wight betrays the moderating influence of
the winds blowing off the Atlantic Ocean. In summer polar maritime air
is less common, and the 9° difference of latitude and the distance from
the sea assume more importance, so that temperatures increase from north
to south and from the coast inland. Above-average temperatures usually
accompany tropical continental air, particularly in anticyclonic, or
high-pressure, conditions. On rare occasions these southerly or
southeasterly airstreams can bring heat waves to southern England with
temperatures of 90 °F (32 °C). The mean annual temperature ranges from
46 °F (8 °C) in the Hebrides to 52 °F (11 °C) in southwestern England.
In spring and autumn a variety of airstreams and temperature conditions
may occur.

Rain-producing atmospheric systems arrive from a westerly direction,
and some of the bleak summits of the highest peaks of the highland zone
can receive as much as 200 inches (5,100 mm) of rainfall per year.
Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Thames estuary, in contrast, can expect as
little as 20 inches (510 mm) annually. Rain is fairly well distributed
throughout the year. June, on average, is the driest month throughout
Britain; May is the next driest in the eastern and central parts of
England, but April is drier in parts of the west and north. The wettest
months are typically October, December, and August, but in a given year
almost any month can prove to be the wettest, and the association of
Britain with seemingly perpetual rainfall (a concept popularly held
among foreigners) is based on a germ of truth. Some precipitation falls
as snow, which increases with altitude and from southwest to northeast.
The average number of days with snow falling can vary from as many as 30
in blizzard-prone northeastern Scotland to as few as five in
southwestern England. Average daily hours of sunshine vary from less
than three in the extreme northeast to about four and one-half along the
southeastern coast.

Plant and animal lifeExcept for northern Scotland, the highest hills of the north and west,
the saturated fens and marshes, and the seacoast fringes, the natural
vegetation of the British Isles is deciduous forest dominated by oak.
Human occupation has left only scattered woodlands and areas of wild or
seminatural vegetation outside the enclosed cultivated fields. Few of
the fine moorlands and heathlands, wild though they may appear, can lay
claim to any truly natural plant communities. Nearly all show varying
degrees of adjustment to grazing, swaling (controlled burning), or other
activities. Woodland now covers less than one-tenth of the country, and,
although the Forestry Commission has been active since its creation in
1919, nearly two-thirds of this woodland remains in private hands. The
largest areas of woodland now stand in northeastern Scotland, Kielder
and other forests in Northumberland, Ashdown Forest in Sussex, Gwynedd
in Wales, and Breckland in Norfolk.

The moorlands and heathlands that occupy about one-fourth of the
total area of the United Kingdom consist of arctic-alpine vegetation on
some mountain summits in Scotland and the much more extensive peat moss,
heather, bilberry, and thin Molinia and Nardus grass moors of the
highland zone. Similar vegetation exists on high ground in eastern
Northern Ireland and on the Mournes, and there are considerable areas of
peat moss vegetation on the mountains of Antrim. In the lowland zone,
where light sandy soils occur, the most common plant of the moorlands is
the common heather—whose deep purple adds a splash of colour to the
autumn countryside—but these areas also contain bilberry and bell
heather. A strip of land immediately bordering the coastline has also
largely escaped exploitation by humans and domesticated animals, so that
patches of maritime vegetation often appear in approximately their
natural state.

The survival of the wild mammals, amphibians, and reptiles of the
United Kingdom depends on their ability to adapt to the changing
environment and to protect themselves from attacks by their enemies, the
most dangerous of whom are human. British mammals survive in a greater
range of habitats than do amphibians or reptiles. Most of the formerly
abundant larger mammals—such as boars, reindeer, and wolves—have become
extinct, but red deer survive in the Scottish Highlands and in Exmoor
Forest and roe deer in the wooded areas of Scotland and southern
England. Smaller carnivores (badgers, otters, foxes, stoats, and
weasels) thrive in most rural areas. Rodents (rats, squirrels, mice) and
insectivores (hedgehogs, moles, shrews) are also widely distributed.
Rabbits are widespread, and their numbers are increasing. The other
nocturnal vegetarian, the brown hare, lives in open lowland country,
while the mountain hare is native to Scotland. Amphibians include three
species of newt and five species of frogs and toads, while reptiles
comprise three species of snakes, of which only the adder is venomous,
and three species of lizards. There are no snakes in Northern Ireland.

In many respects the British Isles are an ornithologist’s paradise.
The islands lie at the focal point of a migratory network, and the
coastal, farmland, and urban habitats for birds are diverse. Some 200
species of birds occur in the United Kingdom, of which more than
one-half are migratory. Many species are sufficiently versatile to adapt
to changing conditions, and it is estimated that suburban gardens have a
higher bird density than any kind of woodland. The most common game
birds are the wild pigeon, pheasant, and grouse. Most numerous are the
sparrow, blackbird, chaffinch, and starling.

Marshland reclamation has displaced waterfowl to various bird
sanctuaries. A continuous effort by ornithological organizations has
promoted and encouraged research and conservation. It also has led to
the creation of bird refuges, sanctuaries, and reserves. These
developments, along with a more sympathetic and enlightened attitude,
may help to redress some of the worst effects of environmental changes
on bird life.

Many British rivers, once renowned for their salmon, trout, roach,
perch, pike, and grayling, have become polluted, and inland fisheries
have consequently declined. Freshwater fishing is now largely for
recreation and sport. The Dogger Bank in the North Sea, one of the
richest fishing grounds in the world, has provided excellent fishing for
centuries. Other good waters for fishing lie in the Irish Sea and also
off the western coast of Scotland. Chief offshore species are cod,
haddock, whiting, mackerel, coalfish, turbot, herring, and plaice.

PeopleEthnic groupsFor centuries people have migrated to the British Isles from many parts
of the world, some to avoid political or religious persecution, others
to find a better way of life or to escape poverty. In historic times
migrants from the European mainland joined the indigenous population of
Britain during the Roman Empire and during the invasions of the Angles,
Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Normans. The Irish have long made homes in
Great Britain. Many Jews arrived in Britain toward the end of the 19th
century and in the 1930s. After 1945 large numbers of other European
refugees settled in the country. The large immigrant communities from
the West Indies and South Asia date from the 1950s and ’60s. There are
also substantial groups of Americans, Australians, and Chinese, as well
as various other Europeans, such as Greeks, Russians, Poles, Serbs,
Estonians, Latvians, Armenians, Turkish Cypriots, Italians, and
Spaniards. Beginning in the early 1970s, Ugandan Asians (expelled by Idi
Amin) and immigrants from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Sri Lanka
have sought refuge in Britain. People of Indian, Pakistani, and
Bangladeshi origin account for more than half of the total ethnic
minority population, and people of West Indian origin are the next
largest group. The foreign-born element of the population is
disproportionately concentrated in inner-city areas, and more than half
live in Greater London.

LanguagesAll the traditional languages spoken in the United Kingdom ultimately
derive from a common Indo-European origin, a tongue so ancient that,
over the millennia, it has split into a variety of languages, each with
its own peculiarities in sounds, grammar, and vocabulary. The distinct
languages in what became the United Kingdom originated when languages
from the European continent developed independently in the British
Isles, cut off from regular communication with their parent languages.

Of the surviving languages the earliest to arrive were the two forms
of Celtic: the Goidelic (from which Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic
derive) and Brythonic (from which the old Cornish language and modern
Welsh have developed). Among the contemporary Celtic languages Welsh is
the strongest: about one-fifth of the total population of Wales are able
to speak it, and there are extensive interior upland areas and regions
facing the Irish Sea where the percentage rises to more than half.
Scottish Gaelic is strongest among the inhabitants of the islands of the
Outer Hebrides and Skye, although it is still heard in the nearby North
West Highlands. Because less than 2 percent of Scots are able to speak
Gaelic, it has long since ceased to be a national language, and even in
northwestern areas, where it remains the language of religion, business,
and social activity, Gaelic is losing ground. In Northern Ireland very
little Irish is spoken. Similarly, Manx no longer has any native
speakers, although as late as 1870 it was spoken by about half the
people of the Isle of Man. The last native speakers of Cornish died in
the 18th century.

The second link with Indo-European is through the ancient Germanic
language group, two branches of which, the North Germanic and the West
Germanic, were destined to make contributions to the English language.
Modern English is derived mainly from the Germanic dialects spoken by
the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (who all arrived in Britain in the 5th
century ad) and heavily influenced by the language of the Danes
(Vikings), who began raiding the British Isles about 790 and
subsequently colonized parts of northern and eastern England. The Humber
became an important linguistic as well as a geographic boundary, and the
English-speaking territory was divided into a Northumbrian province
(roughly corresponding to the kingdom of Northumbria) and a Southumbrian
province (in which the most important kingdoms were Mercia, Wessex, and
Kent). In the 8th century Northumbria was foremost in literature and
culture, followed for a short time by Mercia; afterward Wessex
predominated politically and linguistically until the time of King
Edward the Confessor.

Although the French-speaking Normans were also of Viking stock, the
English population initially regarded them as much more of an alien race
than the Danes. Under the Norman and Angevin kings, England formed part
of a continental empire, and the prolonged connection with France
retained by its new rulers and landlords made a deep impression on the
English language. A hybrid speech combining Anglo-Saxon and Norman
French elements developed and remained the official language, sometimes
even displacing Latin in public documents, until the mid 14th century,
when late Middle English, a language heavily influenced by Norman
French, became the official language. This hybrid language subsequently
evolved into modern English. Many additions to the English language have
been made since the 14th century, but the Normans were the last
important linguistic group to enter Britain.

ReligionThe various Christian denominations in the United Kingdom have emerged
from schisms that divided the church over the centuries. The greatest of
these occurred in England in the 16th century, when Henry VIII rejected
the supremacy of the pope. This break with Rome facilitated the adoption
of some Protestant tenets and the founding of the Church of England,
still the state church in England, although Roman Catholicism has
retained adherents. In Scotland the Reformation gave rise to the Church
of Scotland, which was governed by presbyteries—local bodies composed of
ministers and elders—rather than by bishops, as was the case in England.
Roman Catholicism in Ireland as a whole was almost undisturbed by these
events, but in what became Northern Ireland the Anglican and Scottish
(Presbyterian) churches had many adherents. In the 17th century further
schisms divided the Church of England as a consequence of the Puritan
movement, which gave rise to so-called Nonconformist denominations, such
as the Baptists and the Congregationalists, that reflected the Puritan
desire for simpler forms of worship and church government. The Society
of Friends (Quakers) also originated at that time. Religious revivals of
the mid 18th century gave Wales a form of Protestantism closely linked
with the Welsh language; the Presbyterian Church of Wales (or
Calvinistic Methodism) remains the most powerful religious body in the
principality. The great Evangelical revivals of the 18th century,
associated with John Wesley and others, led to the foundation of
Methodist churches, particularly in the industrial areas.
Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire in northeastern England and
Cornwall in the southwestern peninsula still have the largest
percentages of Methodists. In the 19th century the Salvation Army and
various fundamentalist faiths developed. Denominations from the United
States also gained adherents, and there was a marked increase in the
practice of Judaism in Britain. In 1290 Jews were expelled from Britain,
as they would be from other countries in the 14th and 15th centuries, a
reflection of medieval anti-Semitism. The first Jewish community to be
reestablished in Britain was in London in the 17th century, and in the
19th century Jews also settled in many of the large provincial cities.
More than half of all British Jews live in Greater London, and nearly
all the rest are members of urban communities. Britain now has the
second largest Jewish community in Europe.

The British tradition of religious tolerance has been particularly
important since the 1950s, when immigrants began to introduce a great
variety of religious beliefs. There are large and growing communities
that practice Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism. The largest number of
Muslims came from Pakistan and Bangladesh, with sizable groups from
India, Cyprus, the Arab world, Malaysia, and parts of Africa. The large
Sikh and Hindu communities originated in India. There are also many
Buddhist groups.

Settlement patternsBritish culture preserves regional variations, though they have become
more muted over time. Still, the cultural identities of the Northern
Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish—to say nothing of the rivalry
between a North and South Walian or a Highland and Lowland Scot—are as
distinct as the obvious geographic identities of these parts of the
highland zone.

Rural settlementThe diverse forms and patterns of settlement in the United Kingdom
reflect not only the physical variety of the landscape but also the
successive movements of peoples arriving as settlers, refugees, or
conquerors from continental Europe, along with the changing economic
contexts in which settlement has occurred. Social and economic
advantages led some people to cluster, whereas others had an equally
strong desire for separateness. Both tendencies mark settlement forms in
Britain from very early times, and regional contrasts in the degree of
dispersion and nucleation are frequent.

Single farmsteads, the many surviving old clachans (clusters or
hamlets), and occasional villages and small towns still characterize
much of the highland zone. Some nucleated settlement patterns, however,
have undergone radical change. In Wales hamlets began to disappear in
the late Middle Ages through the related processes of consolidation and
enclosure that accompanied the decline in the size of the bond (feudally
tied) population. The Black Death of 1349, which spread quickly among
poorer inhabitants, reinforced this trend. Many surviving bondsmen fled
their servile obligations amid the turmoil of the nationalistic uprising
led by Owen Glendower. Thus, many Welsh hamlets had fallen into decay by
1410, when the rebellion was crushed. In Scotland great changes
accompanied the late 18th-century Highland clearances, in which
landlords forcibly evicted tenants and converted their holdings to sheep
pastures. As late as the 1880s many clachans disappeared in Northern
Ireland as part of a deliberate policy of reallocating land to new
dispersed farmsteads. Great changes have also occurred in the lowland
zone, where the swing to individual ownership or tenancy from the
medieval custom of landholding in common brought about not only
dispersion and deserted villages but the enclosure of fields by hedges
and walls. Villages remain remarkably stable features of the rural
landscape of Britain, however, and linear, round, oval, and ring-shaped
villages survive, many with their ancient greens still held in common by
the community.

Urban settlement By any standard the United Kingdom is among the most urbanized of
countries, for towns not only typify the national way of life but are
unusually significant elements in the geography of the country. The
greatest overall change in settlement was, in fact, the massive
urbanization that accompanied Britain’s early industrial development.
The increasing percentage of employees in offices and service industries
ensures continued urban growth. Of every 10 people in the United
Kingdom, nine live in towns and more than three of them in one of the
country’s 10 largest metropolitan areas. The Greater London metropolitan
area—the greatest port, the largest centre of industry, the most
important centre of office employment, and the capital city—is by far
the largest of these. The need for accommodating business premises has
displaced population from Inner London, and this outward movement, in
part, has led to the development of new towns outside the 10-mile-
(16-km-) wide Green Belt that surrounds London’s built-up area.

Large metropolitan areas also formed in industrial areas during the
19th and early 20th centuries. Although coalfields or textile
manufacture underpinned the initial growth of many of these urban areas,
coal mining had virtually ceased in all of them by the end of the 20th
century, and the economic predominance of heavy industry and textile
production had given way to a more diverse blend of manufacturing and
service activities. Birmingham dominates the extensive built-up area of
the West Midlands metropolitan area, but the industrial Black
Country—named for its formerly polluted skies and grimy buildings—also
has several large and flourishing towns. In Greater Manchester, with a
similar number of inhabitants, urbanization accompanied the
mechanization of the cotton textile industry. Across the Pennines
similar mechanization of wool textiles created the West Yorkshire
metropolitan area, with Leeds and Bradford as its twin centres. The
metropolitan area of Tyne and Wear (centred on Newcastle upon Tyne) and
the Greater Glasgow metropolitan area are also located on coalfields.
Greater Glasgow houses about one-third of Scotland’s people. Merseyside
(centred on Liverpool) has traditionally served as a seaport and
distribution centre for Greater Manchester and the rest of Lancashire.
Other large metropolitan areas in Great Britain include South Yorkshire
(centred on Sheffield), Nottingham, and Bristol. About one-fifth of
Northern Ireland’s population live in Belfast. In addition to these
large metropolitan areas, there are many other minor urban
agglomerations and large towns, several of which line the coast.

With so much urban and suburban concentration, the problems of air,
water, and noise pollution have attracted much concern in the United
Kingdom. Clean-air legislation has brought considerable progress in
controlling air pollution, partly by establishing smoke-control areas in
most cities and towns, and there has been a shift from coal to cleaner
fuels. Pollution of the rivers remains a large problem, particularly in
the highly industrialized parts of the United Kingdom, but vigilance,
research, and control by the National River Authorities and general
public concern for the environment are encouraging features of
contemporary Britain. Several statutory and voluntary organizations
support measures to protect the environment. They aim to conserve the
natural amenity and beauty not only of the countryside but also of the
towns and cities.

Demographic trendsPopulation growthThe population of the United Kingdom has been increasing since at least
1086, the date of Domesday Book, which provides the earliest reasonable
estimate of England’s population (the survey did not cover other areas).
This growth has continued despite some setbacks, by far the most serious
of which was the Black Death of the mid 14th century, in which it is
estimated that about one-third of the population died. There is little
concrete information, however, concerning birth or death rates,
immigration, or emigration until 1801, the date of the first official
census. The assumption is that a population of about three million lived
in what became the United Kingdom at the end of the 11th century and
that this figure had increased to about 12 million by 1801. This slow
growth rate, in contrast with that of more modern times, resulted mainly
from the combination of a high birth rate with an almost equally high
death rate. Family monuments in old churches show many examples of men
whose “quivers were full” but whose hearths were not crowded. It is
estimated that in the first half of the 18th century three-fourths of
the children born in London died before they reached puberty. Despite
the appalling living conditions it produced, the Industrial Revolution
resulted in an acceleration of the birth rate. Gradually the greater
medical knowledge, improved nutrition, and concern for public health
that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries yielded a lower mortality
rate and an overall increase in population, even as birth rates began to
drop.

Since the 1930s the population has experienced a complete cycle in
its pattern of growth. A low rate of increase during the 1930s was
followed by a post-World War II marriage boom that accelerated the rate
of growth, culminating in a peak during the mid-1960s. After 1964 a
considerable fall in the birth rate brought about a dramatic decline in
growth, with a small absolute decline in population between 1974 and
1978. However, modest population growth resumed during the 1980s, and
the population of the United Kingdom rose from 56 million in 1980 to
about 60 million by the end of the 20th century. The main cause of these
abrupt shifts was the erratic nature of the birth rate, with the
interaction of two opposing trends: on one hand, a long-term general
decline in fertility and, on the other, a rising longevity and a decline
in death rates. Such processes also have affected the age composition of
the population, which has grown decidedly older. There has been a
decline in the proportion of youths and an increase in the proportion of
older people, especially those age 85 and older.

Migration patternsBeginning in the 1950s, the immigration of nonwhite (“New Commonwealth”)
people from such developing nations as India, Pakistan, and the
countries of the West Indies became significant, and from 1957 until
1962 there was a net migration gain. Since then restriction on the entry
of New Commonwealth citizens has lessened the primary inflow, but
dependents of immigrants already in the United Kingdom are still
admitted. The reasons for restricting entry were in part economic but
were also associated with the resistance of the existing population to
the new arrivals. Nevertheless, the United Kingdom continues to gain
people from the New Commonwealth.

Although historical records refer to emigration to North America in
the 17th and 18th centuries, there is little quantitative information
about such movements before the middle of the following century. The
greatest numbers appear to have left Great Britain in the 1880s and
between 1900 and the outbreak of World War I. Emigration, particularly
to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (“Old Commonwealth” countries),
continued at a high rate after the war until 1930, when unfavourable
economic conditions in the British Empire and in the United States
reversed the movement. During the same years, there also was an influx
of refugees from Europe. After World War II both inward and outward
movements were considerable. Emigration to the countries of the Old
Commonwealth and, to a lesser degree, to the United States continued,
but until 1951 immigration into Britain roughly equaled British
emigration to the rest of the world. Since the mid-1960s there has been
a slackening of emigration, as Canada and Australia no longer maintain
an open-door policy to citizens of the United Kingdom, accepting only
those whose skills are in demand. Nevertheless, the United Kingdom
continues to be an exporter of population, albeit on a declining scale,
to the Old Commonwealth, while emigration to the nations of the European
Union and other foreign countries has increased.

Migration within the United Kingdom has at times been sizable. Until
1700 the relatively small population was sparsely distributed and
largely rural and agricultural, much as it had been in medieval times.
From the mid 18th century, scientific and technological innovations
created the first modern industrial state. At the same time, agriculture
underwent technical and tenurial changes that allowed increased
production with a smaller workforce, and revolutionary improvements in
transport facilitated the movement of materials and people. As a result,
by the late 19th century a theretofore mainly rural population had
largely become a nation of industrial workers and town dwellers.

The rural exodus was a long process. The breakdown of communal
farming started before the 14th century. Subsequently enclosures
advanced steadily, especially after 1740, until a century later open
fields had virtually disappeared from the landscape. Many of the
displaced landless agricultural labourers were attracted to the better
employment opportunities and the higher wage levels of the growing
industries. Meanwhile, a rapid rise in the birth rate had produced a
growing population of young people in the countryside who faced little
prospect of agricultural employment. These groups contributed to a high
volume of internal migration toward the towns.

Industry, as well as the urban centres that inevitably grew up around
it, concentrated near the coalfields, while the railway network, which
grew rapidly after 1830, enhanced the commercial importance of many
towns. The migration of people, especially young people, from the
country to industrialized towns took place at an unprecedented rate in
the early railway age, and such movements were relatively confined
geographically. Migration from agricultural Ireland provided an
exception, for, when the disastrous potato disease of 1845–49 led to
widespread famine, large numbers moved to Great Britain to become urban
workers in Lancashire, Clydeside (the Glasgow region), and London. The
rural exodus continued, but on a greatly reduced scale, after 1901.

Soon after World War I, new interregional migration flows commenced
when the formerly booming 19th-century industrial and mining districts
lost much of their economic momentum. Declining or stagnating heavy
industry in Clydeside, northeastern England, South Wales, and parts of
Lancashire and Yorkshire swelled the ranks of the unemployed, and many
migrated to the relatively more prosperous Midlands and southern
England. This movement of people continued until it was arrested by the
relatively full employment conditions that obtained soon after the
outbreak of World War II.

In the 1950s opportunities for employment in the United Kingdom
improved with government-sponsored diversification of industry, reducing
the volume of migration to the south. The decline of certain northern
industries—coal mining, shipbuilding, and cotton textiles in
particular—had nevertheless reached a critical level by the late 1960s,
and the emergence of new growth points in the West Midlands and
southeastern England made the drift to the south a continuing feature of
British economic life. During the 1960s and ’70s the areas of most rapid
growth were East Anglia, the South West, and the East Midlands, partly
because of limitations on growth in Greater London and the development
of peripheral new towns in surrounding areas.

During the 1980s the government largely abandoned subsidies for
industry and adopted a program of rationalization and privatization. The
result was the collapse of coal mining and heavy industry in the north
and the West Midlands of England and in the Lowlands of Scotland and a
similar loss of heavy industry in Northern Ireland; this unleashed a
wave of migration from these regions to the more prosperous south of
England, especially East Anglia, the East Midlands, and the South West.
As the economy stabilized during the 1990s, migration from Scotland,
Northern Ireland, and northern England subsided. While the South East
(including Greater London) was the chief destination of external
immigrants into Britain, this region, along with the West Midlands,
produced a growing internal migration to surrounding regions of England
during the 1990s. This pattern reflected a larger trend of migration out
of older urban centres throughout Britain to surrounding rural areas and
small towns at the end of the 20th century.

William Ravenhill
Ed.

Economy

The United Kingdom has a fiercely independent, developed, and
international trading economy that was at the forefront of the
19th-century Industrial Revolution. The country emerged from World War
II as a military victor but with a debilitated manufacturing sector.
Postwar recovery was relatively slow, and it took nearly 40 years, with
additional stimulation after 1973 from membership in the European
Economic Community (now the European Community in the European Union
[EU]), for the British economy to improve its competitiveness
significantly. Economic growth rates in the 1990s compared favourably
with those of other top industrial countries. Manufacturing’s
contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) has declined to about
one-fifth of the total, with services providing the source of greatest
growth. The United Kingdom’s chief trading ties have shifted from its
former empire to other members of the EU, which account for more than
half its trade in tangible goods. The United States is a major
investment and trading partner, and Japan has become a significant
investor in local production. American and Japanese companies often
choose the United Kingdom as their European base. In addition, other
fast-developing East Asian countries with export-oriented economies
include the United Kingdom’s open market among their important outlets.

During the 1980s the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher
pursued the privatization, or denationalization, of publicly owned
corporations that had been nationalized by previous governments.
Privatization, accompanied by widespread labour unrest, resulted in the
loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the coal-mining and heavy
industrial sectors. Although there was some improvement in the standard
of living nationally, in general there was greater prosperity in the
South East, including London, than in the heavily industrialized regions
of the West Midlands, northern England, Clydeside, and Belfast, whose
economies suffered during the 1980s. During the 1980s and ’90s, income
disparity also increased. Unemployment and inflation rates were
gradually reduced but remained high until the late 1990s. The country’s
role as a major world financial centre remained a source of economic
strength. Moreover, its exploitation of offshore natural gas since 1967
and oil since 1975 in the North Sea has reduced dependence on coal and
imported oil and provided a further economic boost.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishingAgricultureThe United Kingdom is unusual, even among western European countries, in
the small proportion of its employed population (about 2 percent)
engaged in agriculture. With commercial intensification of yields and a
high level of mechanization, supported initially by national policy and
subsequently by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU, the
output of some agricultural products has exceeded demand. Employment in
agriculture has declined gradually, and, with the introduction of
policies to achieve reduction of surpluses, the trend is likely to
continue. Efforts have been made to create alternative employment
opportunities in rural areas, some of which are remote from towns. The
land area used for agriculture (about three-quarters of the total) has
also declined, and the arable share has fallen in favour of pasture.

Official agricultural policy conforms to the CAP and has aimed to
improve productivity, to ensure stable markets, to provide producers a
fair standard of living, and to guarantee consumers regular food
supplies at reasonable prices. To achieve these aims, the CAP provides a
system of minimum prices for domestic goods and levies on imports to
support domestic prices. Exports are encouraged by subsidies that make
up the difference between the world market price and the EU price. For a
few products, particularly beef and sheep, there are additional payments
made directly to producers. More recent policies have included milk
quotas, land set-asides (to compensate farmers for taking land out of
agricultural use), and reliance on the price mechanism as a regulator.

The most important farm crops are wheat, barley, oats, sugar beets,
potatoes, and rapeseed. While significant proportions of wheat, barley,
and rapeseed provide animal feed, much of the remainder is processed for
human consumption through flour milling (wheat), malting and distilling
(barley), and the production of vegetable oil (rapeseed). The main
livestock products derive from cattle and calves, sheep and lambs, pigs,
and poultry. The United Kingdom has achieved a high level of
self-sufficiency in the main agricultural products except for sugar and
cheese.

ForestryAbout one-tenth of the United Kingdom’s land area is devoted to
productive forestry. The government-supported Forestry Commission
manages almost half of these woodlands, and the rest are in private
hands. Domestic timber production supplies less than one-fifth of the
United Kingdom’s demand. The majority of new plantings are of conifers
in upland areas, but the commission encourages planting broad-leaved
trees where appropriate.

Fishing Although the United Kingdom is one of Europe’s leading fishing
countries, the industry has been in long-term decline. Fishing limits
were extended to 200 nautical miles (370 km) offshore in the mid-1970s,
and, because a significant part of the area fished by other EU members
lies within British waters, it has been necessary to regulate catches on
a community-wide basis. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has lost
opportunities to fish in some more-distant waters (e.g., those off
Iceland), and this has reduced its total catch more than those of other
countries of the EU. The United Kingdom’s fishing industry now supplies
only half the country’s total demand. The most important fish landed are
cod, haddock, mackerel, whiting, and plaice, as well as shellfish,
including Nephrops (Norway lobsters), lobsters, crabs, and oysters.
Estuarine fish farming—mainly of trout and salmon—has expanded
considerably.

Resources and powerMineralsThe United Kingdom has relatively limited supplies of economically
valuable mineral resources. The once-important extraction of iron ore
has dwindled to almost nothing. Other important metals that are mined
include tin, which supplies about half the domestic demand, and zinc.
There are adequate supplies of nonmetallic minerals, including sand and
gravel, limestone, dolomite, chalk, slate, barite, talc, clay and clay
shale, kaolin (china clay), ball clay, fuller’s earth, celestine, and
gypsum. Sand, gravel, limestone, and other crushed rocks are quarried
for use in construction.

EnergyBy contrast, the United Kingdom has larger energy resources—including
oil, natural gas, and coal—than any other EU member. Coal, the fuel once
vital to the British economy, has continued to decrease in importance.
Compared with its peak year of 1913, when more than one million workers
produced more than 300 million tons, current output has fallen by more
than four-fifths, with an even greater reduction in the labour force.
Power stations are the major customers for coal, but, with growth in the
use of other fuels and the increasing closing of pits that have become
uneconomical to operate, the industry remains under considerable
pressure.

The discovery of oil in the North Sea and the apportionment of its
area to surrounding countries led to the rapid development of oil
exploitation. Since the start of production in 1975, the quantities
brought ashore have grown each year, and the United Kingdom has become
virtually self-sufficient in oil and even an exporter. With an average
output of nearly three million barrels per day at the beginning of the
21st century, the country was one of the world’s largest producers. The
balance of payments has benefited considerably from oil revenues, and a
substantial proportion has been invested abroad to offset diminishing
oil income in the future. Proven reserves were estimated at around 700
million tons in the late 1990s.

Since offshore natural gas supplies from the North Sea began to be
available in quantity in 1967, they have replaced the previously
coal-based supplies of town gas. A national network of distribution
pipelines has been created. Proven reserves of natural gas were
estimated at 26.8 trillion cubic feet (760 billion cubic metres) in the
late 1990s.

Self-sufficiency in oil and natural gas and the decline of coal
mining has transformed Britain’s energy sector. Nuclear fuel has
slightly expanded its contribution to electricity generation, and
hydroelectric power contributes a small proportion (mainly in Scotland),
but conventional steam power stations provide most of the country’s
electricity.

ManufacturingThe manufacturing sector as a whole has continued to shrink both in
employment and in its contribution (now around one-fifth) to the GDP.
The decline in manufacturing largely accounted for the rapid rise in
unemployment in the early 1980s. Once economic growth returned, however,
there was great improvement in productivity and profits in British
manufacturing.

In terms of their relative importance to the GDP, the most important
manufacturing industries are engineering; food, beverages (including
alcoholic beverages), and tobacco; chemicals; paper, printing, and
publishing; metals and minerals; and textiles, clothing, footwear, and
leather. The fastest-growing sectors have been chemicals and electrical
engineering. Within the chemical industry, pharmaceuticals and specialty
products have shown the largest increases. Within the engineering
industry, electrical and instrument engineering and transport
engineering—including motor vehicles and aerospace equipment—have grown
faster than mechanical engineering and metal goods, and electronic
products have shown the fastest growth. On the other hand, the growth in
motor vehicle production has occurred among foreign-owned, especially
Japanese, companies investing in the United Kingdom. British automobile
manufacturers have been in decline since the 1970s. After a period of
restructuring during the 1980s, the British steel industry substantially
increased its productivity, output, and exports during the 1990s.
However, food, beverages, tobacco, leather, and engineering as a whole
have had below-average growth. Textiles, clothing, and footwear have
been in absolute decline because British companies have faced increasing
difficulty competing with imports, especially from Asia.

During the 1980s imports of manufactured products increased
dramatically, and, although exports of finished manufactured products
increased in value, the surplus in the balance of trade disappeared and
was transformed into a large deficit. Nevertheless, after a period of
restructuring in the 1980s, Britain’s manufacturing sector increased its
productivity and competitiveness, and the trade balance improved and
stabilized during the 1990s.

Construction in Britain stagnated during the 1990s because of a
decline in prices and in demand for new housing and because of decreased
government investment in infrastructure during the first half of the
decade. About half the labour force in construction is self-employed.
More than half of all construction work is on new projects, the
remainder on repair and maintenance. There has been a marked switch from
housing funded and owned by public authorities toward private
development. Considerable efforts have also been made to encourage
tenants of publicly owned rented houses to become owner-occupiers, with
the result that the proportion of owner-occupied homes has grown
considerably since the early 1970s. The supply of privately rented
accommodations became scarcer because of statutory rent controls that
discouraged new construction, but changes during the 1980s both in the
economic climate and in official policy began to stimulate the supply.
The average price of a new house, particularly in London and the South
East, has generally continued to increase more rapidly than the
prevailing rate of inflation, although prices have fluctuated
considerably. In turn, the rising price of new homes has created
considerable pressure on the land available for housing, which has been
relatively tightly controlled. Here, too, public policy has been
changing in favour of greater permissiveness.

Private industrial and commercial construction and public projects
account for the remainder of construction. During the 1980s and ’90s the
United Kingdom embarked on a series of major infrastructure projects,
including the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France, the rebuilding
of large parts of London’s traditional Docklands as a new commercial
centre, and extensions to London’s rail and Underground systems.

FinanceThe United Kingdom, particularly London, has traditionally been a world
financial centre. Restructuring and deregulation transformed the sector
during the 1980s and ’90s, with important changes in banking, insurance,
the London Stock Exchange, shipping, and commodity markets. Some
long-standing distinctions between financial institutions have become
less clear-cut. For example, housing loans used to be primarily the
responsibility of building societies, but increasingly banks and
insurance companies have entered this area of lending. Two related
developments have occurred: the transformation of building-society
branch offices into virtual banks with personal cashing facilities and
the diversification of all three of these types of institutions into
real estate services. Building societies also participate to a limited
extent in investment services, insurance, trusteeship, executorship, and
land services.

At the end of the 20th century, the financial services industry
employed more than one million people and contributed about one-twelfth
of the GDP. Although financial services have grown rapidly in some
medium-sized cities, notably Leeds and Edinburgh, London has continued
to dominate the industry and has grown in size and influence as a centre
of international financial operations. Capital flows have increased, as
have foreign exchange and securities trading. Consequently, London has
more foreign banks than any other city in the world. Increased
competition and technological developments have accelerated change. The
International Stock Exchange was reorganized, and the historical
two-tier structure of brokers, who executed investors’ instructions to
buy and sell stocks and shares, and jobbers, who “made” markets in these
securities, was abolished. As a result, new companies link British and
foreign banks with former brokers and jobbers. The Financial Services
Act of 1986, the Building Societies Act of 1987, and the Banking Act of
1987 regulate these new financial organizations. In 1997 the government
established a Financial Services Authority (FSA) to regulate the
financial services industry; it replaced a series of separate
supervisory organizations, some of them based on self-regulation. Among
other tasks, the FSA has taken over the supervision of the United
Kingdom’s commercial banks from the Bank of England.

The Bank of England retains the sole right to issue bank notes in
England and Wales (banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland have limited
rights to do this in their own areas). In 1997 the Bank of England was
given the power to set the “repo,” or benchmark, interest rate, which
influences the general structure of interest rates. The bank’s standing
instruction from the government is to set an interest rate that will
meet a target inflation rate of 2.5 percent per annum. The bank also
intervenes actively in foreign exchange markets and acts as the
government’s banker. The pound sterling is a major internationally
traded currency.

A variety of institutions, including insurance companies, pension
funds, and investment and unit trusts, channel individual savings into
investments. Finance houses are the primary providers of home mortgages
and corporate lending and leasing. There are also companies that finance
the leasing of business equipment; factoring companies that provide
immediate cash to creditors and subsequently collect the corporate debts
owed; and finance corporations that provide venture capital funding for
innovations or high-risk companies and that supplement the medium- and
long-term capital markets, otherwise supplied by the banks or the Stock
Market.

The United Kingdom has a number of organized financial markets. The
securities markets comprise the International Stock Exchange, which
deals in officially listed stocks and shares (including government
issues, traded options, stock index options, and currency options); the
Unlisted Securities Market, for smaller companies; and the Third Market,
for small unlisted companies. Money market activities include the
trading of bills, certificates of deposit, short-term deposits, and,
increasingly, sterling commercial paper. Other markets are those dealing
in Eurocurrency, Eurobonds, foreign exchange, financial futures, gold,
ship brokerage, freight futures, and agricultural and other commodity
futures.

The share of invisible trade (receipts and payments from financial
services; interest, profits, and dividends; and transfers between the
United Kingdom and other countries) has been rising steadily since the
1960s—from about one-third to one-half of the country’s total foreign
earnings. Within this area, service transactions have grown rapidly, and
financial services have grown the fastest.

TradeTrade has long been pivotal to the United Kingdom’s economy. The total
value of imports and exports represents nearly half the country’s GDP.
(By comparison, the value of foreign trade amounts to about one-fifth of
the GDP of the United States.) The volume of both the exports and the
imports of the United Kingdom has grown steadily in recent years.
Principal British exports include machinery, automobiles and other
transport equipment, electrical and electronic equipment (including
computers), chemicals, and oil. Services, particularly financial
services, are another major export and contribute positively to
Britain’s trade balance. The country imports about one-tenth of its
foodstuffs and about one-third of its machinery and transport equipment.

An increasing share of the United Kingdom’s trade is with other
developed countries. Joining the European Economic Community caused a
major reorientation of trade flows; more than half of all trade is now
with European partners, although at the beginning of the 21st century
the United States remained the United Kingdom’s single largest export
market and its second largest supplier. Germany was the leading supplier
and the second most important export market.

The United Kingdom’s current overall balance of payments (including
trade in services and transfer payments), which historically had been
generally favourable, fell into deficit from the mid-1980s until the
late 1990s because visible imports (i.e., tangible goods imported)
exceeded visible exports. Meanwhile there was considerable overseas
investment, and foreign earnings grew. The government has supported
trade liberalization and participated in international trade
organizations. By the late 1990s the steady growth in exports of goods
and services and in foreign earnings had produced the first
balance-of-payments surplus in more than a decade.

ServicesThe most remarkable economic development in the United Kingdom has been
the growth of service industries, which now provide about two-thirds of
the GDP and three-fourths of total employment. This reflects the rise in
real personal incomes, changes in patterns of consumer expenditure, and
the elaboration and increasing outsourcing of business services.
Although some services—for example, public transportation, laundries,
and movie theatres—have declined in favour of privately owned goods—such
as automobiles, washing machines, and television sets—this has
stimulated increased demand for the related services that distribute,
maintain, and repair such products. Other growing service industries
include hotels and catering, air travel and other leisure-related
activities, distribution (particularly retailing), and finance.
Especially rapid growth has occurred in other business-support services,
including computing systems and software, management consultancy,
advertising, and market research, as well as the provision of exhibition
and conference facilities. Britain is also the base for some of the
world’s leading art auction houses.

The United Kingdom’s many cultural treasures—e.g., its historic
castles, museums, and theatres—make it a popular tourist destination.
The tourism industry is a leading sector in the British economy, and
each year more than 25 million tourists visit the country. London is
among the world’s most-visited cities.

Labour and taxationGovernment revenues are derived from several main sources, including
income taxes, corporate taxes, taxes on the sale of goods and services,
and national insurance contributions. After World War II the government
adopted individual income tax rates that were among the highest in
Europe. During the last two decades of the 20th century, individual
income tax rates dropped, and corporate tax rates increased slightly. A
value-added tax, which levies a 17.5 percent tax on purchases, generates
nearly one-third of government revenues.

During the 1980s the Thatcher government adopted policies that placed
limits on the power and influence of trade unions and provided training
for those entering the workforce or changing careers. The Labour
government of the late 1990s retained many of Thatcher’s policies, but
they abandoned the Conservative objective of unlimited tax reduction and
instead sought to stabilize the overall burden of taxation at about 37
percent of GDP.

Just under half the total population is in the labour force,
including a small but expanding proportion who are self-employed. About
three-tenths of workers are members of a trade union, a share that
dropped significantly with the adoption of legislation restricting trade
union rights in the last two decades of the 20th century. Among the
various influential trade organizations are the public-sector union
Unison; the manufacturing-sector union Amalgamated Engineering and
Electrical Union, and the general-services unions General, Municipal,
and Boilermakers’ Union and Transport and General Workers’ Union.
Although manufacturing once dominated employment, it now involves less
than one-sixth of all workers. In contrast, the service sector employs
more than two-thirds of employees, with financial services and
distribution the two largest components.

Transportation and telecommunicationsThe United Kingdom, which is relatively small in area and has a fairly
high population density, has undergone considerable change in its
patterns of transport. The growth of automobile ownership (by the turn
of the 21st century, nearly two-thirds of all households had one
automobile, and some had two or more), the decline in the use of local
buses, and the transfer of much internal freight from rail to road
increased the importance of maintaining and developing road networks,
particularly motorways (superhighways) and trunk roads. Intercity rail
services have been improved, as have commuter services in major
metropolitan areas. Similarly, air traffic has grown, particularly
international flights. Although there has been a downward trend in
shipping and sea travel, most foreign trade still moves by sea. However,
the opening of the Channel Tunnel rail link between England and France
in 1994 had a big impact on cross-Channel passenger and freight
patterns. At peak periods the tunnel accommodates up to four passenger
and four freight shuttletrains per hour in each direction. By the end of
the decade, these trains carried about half of the car traffic and more
than one-third of the coach and truck traffic on the
Dover/Folkestone–Calais route—the principal artery linking Britain to
mainland Europe. In addition, the tunnel accommodates through freight
trains and high-speed passenger trains between London and Paris or
Brussels. Substantial passenger and cargo traffic moves by sea between
the ports of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Europe. Oil and natural
gas, each of which has a national bulk-distribution pipeline system, do
not rely on the road and rail networks.

Investment in transportation has sometimes failed to meet rising
demand—for example, the M25 motorway around London showed signs of
overload soon after it was opened in 1986; there is overcrowding on
commuter rail services, including London’s Underground; congested
traffic moves at a snail’s pace in cities; and there is continuous
pressure to build more motorways and airports to serve London.

During the 1980s British Telecom (BT) was privatized, and the
government subsequently deregulated the country’s telecommunications
sector. Although BT has continued to be the largest telecommunications
company, several additional operators provide extensive service for
cable, wireless, fibre-optic, and other telecommunications services. An
independent regulatory agency, the Office of Communications (Ofcom),
oversees the sector.

Ulric M. Spencer
Peter Jon Kellner

Government and society

Constitutional frameworkThe United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary
democracy. The country’s head of state is the reigning king or queen,
and the head of government is the prime minister, who is the leader of
the majority political party in the House of Commons.

The British constitution is uncodified; it is only partly written and
is flexible. Its basic sources are parliamentary and European Union
legislation, the European Convention on Human Rights, and decisions by
courts of law. Matters for which there is no formal law, such as the
resignation of office by a government, follow precedents (conventions)
that are open to development or modification. Works of authority, such
as Albert Venn Dicey’s Lectures Introductory to the Study of the Law of
the Constitution (1885), are also considered part of the constitution.

The main elements of the government are the legislature, the
executive, and the judiciary. There is some overlap between the
branches, as there is no formal separation of powers or system of checks
and balances. For example, the lord chancellor traditionally was a
member of all three branches, serving as a member of the cabinet
(executive branch), as the government’s leader in the House of Lords
(legislative branch), and as the head of the country’s judiciary
(judicial branch). However, constitutional reforms in 2006 stripped the
office of most of its legislative and judicial functions, with those
powers devolving to the lord speaker and the lord chief justice,
respectively.

Sovereignty resides in Parliament, which comprises the monarch, the
mainly appointive House of Lords, and the elected House of Commons. The
sovereignty of Parliament is expressed in its legislative enactments,
which are binding on all, though individuals may contest in the courts
the legality of any action under a specific statute. In certain
circumstances individuals may also seek protection under European law.
Until 1999 the House of Lords consisted mainly of hereditary peers (or
nobles). Since then it has comprised mainly appointed peers, selected by
successive prime ministers to serve for life. However, 92 (out of 759)
hereditary peers were permitted to retain their membership in the House
of Lords pending a more far-reaching reform of the upper house. Each of
the 646 members of the House of Commons (members of Parliament; MPs)
represents an individual constituency (district) by virtue of winning a
plurality of votes in the constituency.

All political power rests with the prime minister and the cabinet,
and the monarch must act on their advice. The prime minister chooses the
cabinet from MPs in his political party. Most cabinet ministers are
heads of government departments. The prime minister’s authority grew
during the 20th century, and, alone or with one or two colleagues, the
prime minister increasingly has made decisions previously made by the
cabinet as a whole. Prime ministers have nevertheless been overruled by
the cabinet on many occasions and must generally have its support to
exercise their powers.

Because the party with a majority in the House of Commons supports
the cabinet, it exercises the sovereignty of Parliament. The royal right
of veto has not been exercised since the early 18th century, and the
legislative power of the House of Lords was reduced in 1911 to the right
to delay legislation. The cabinet plans and lays before Parliament all
important bills. Although the cabinet thus controls the lawmaking
machinery, it is also subject to Parliament; it must expound and defend
its policy in debate, and its continuation in office depends on the
support of the House of Commons.

The executive apparatus, the cabinet secretariat, was developed after
World War I and carries out the cabinet’s decisions. It also prepares
the cabinet’s agenda, records its conclusions, and communicates them to
the government departments that implement them.

Regional governmentWithin the United Kingdom, national assemblies in Scotland, Wales, and
Northern Ireland took power in 1999 and assumed some powers previously
held exclusively by the central Parliament at Westminster, to which they
remain subordinate. The central Parliament retains full legislative and
executive control over England, which lacks a separate regional
assembly. Scotland’s Parliament has wide powers over such matters as
health, education, housing, transport, the environment, and agriculture.
It also has the power to increase or decrease the British income tax
rate within Scotland by up to three percentage points. The central
Parliament retains responsibility for foreign affairs, defense, social
security, and overall economic policy. Unlike the members of the House
of Commons, members of the Scottish Parliament are chosen under a system
of proportional representation. Scotland has a distinct legal system
based on Roman law. Since 1999 Wales has also had its own assembly, but
because it has neither legislative nor tax-gathering powers, the Welsh
assembly is significantly less powerful than the Scottish Parliament. It
does, however, broadly administer the same services as the Scottish
Parliament, albeit within a legislative framework set by Westminster.
Like Scottish legislators, members of the Welsh assembly are elected by
proportional representation. The Northern Ireland Assembly gained
limited legislative and executive power at the end of 1999. Its members,
like those of the other regional assemblies, are elected by proportional
representation. It has power over matters concerning agriculture,
economic development, education, the environment, health, and social
services, but the Westminster government retains control over foreign
affairs, defense, general economic policy, taxation, policing, and
criminal justice. Divisions between unionist (Protestant) and
nationalist (Roman Catholic) factions in the Northern Ireland Assembly,
however, have threatened its future. If either faction withdraws from
the assembly, the region could return to the system of direct rule by
the central government that prevailed in Northern Ireland from 1973 to
1999.

Local government Each part of the United Kingdom has a distinct system of local
government. (For a full account of local government in each part of the
United Kingdom, see the discussions of local government in the articles
on England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.) Local governments
have very few legislative powers and must act within the framework of
laws passed by the central Parliament (and by the Scottish Parliament in
Scotland). Nevertheless, they do have the power to enact regulations and
to levy rates (property taxes) within limits set by the central
government. They are funded by the rates that they levy, by fees for
services, and by grants from the central government. Local governments
in the United Kingdom are responsible for a range of community services,
including environmental matters, education, highways and traffic, social
services, fire fighting, sanitation, planning, housing, parks and
recreation, and elections. In Scotland and Wales regional governments
handle some of these functions, and local governments handle the
remainder. In Northern Ireland the Northern Ireland Assembly is
responsible for many of these functions. The responsibilities of local
governments in Northern Ireland are limited to environmental matters,
sanitation, and recreation.

Parts of the United Kingdom have as many as three levels, or tiers,
of local government, each with its own responsibilities, whereas other
areas have only a single tier or two tiers. Throughout England, parish
and town councils form the lowest tier of local government. (Parishes
are civil subdivisions, usually centred on a village or small town, that
are distinct from church bodies.) They have the power to assess
“precepts” (surcharges) on the local rates and a range of rights and
duties, including maintenance of commons, recreational facilities, and
environmental quality and participation in the planning process.
Community councils perform a similar role in Wales, whereas community
councils in Scotland are voluntary and consultative bodies with few
statutory powers. This lowest level of local government has no
counterpart in Northern Ireland.

The next tier of local government is usually known in England and
Northern Ireland as a district, borough, or city. In Northern Ireland
this is the only level of local government. In Scotland and Wales this
second tier is the only one with broad powers over major local
government functions. In Wales these local government areas are known as
either counties or county boroughs, while in Scotland they are variously
known as council areas or local government authorities or, in some
cases, cities. In some areas of England this second tier of local
government is the only one with broad statutory and administrative
powers. These areas are known in England as unitary authorities (since
they form a single tier of local government above the parishes and
towns) or metropolitan boroughs (which are functionally equivalent to
unitary authorities but form part of a larger metropolitan county). In
other areas of England, districts, boroughs, and cities form an
intermediate tier of local government between the towns and parishes on
the one hand and administrative counties on the other. Administrative
counties, which cover much of England, are the highest tier of local
government where they exist.

In Greater London, boroughs form the lowest tier of local government
and are responsible for most local government functions. However, in
2000 a new Greater London Authority (GLA) was established with very
limited revenue-gathering powers but with responsibility for public
transport, policing, emergency services, the environment, and planning
in Greater London as a whole. The GLA consists of a directly elected
mayor (a constitutional innovation for the United Kingdom, which had
never previously filled any executive post by direct election) and a
25-member assembly elected by proportional representation.

Whereas the administrative counties of England and the counties and
county boroughs of Wales have statutory and administrative powers, there
are other areas throughout the United Kingdom that are called counties
but lack administrative power. In England, metropolitan counties cover
metropolitan areas; they serve as geographic and statistical units, but
since 1986 their administrative powers have belonged to their
constituent metropolitan boroughs. Moreover, in England there is a unit
known variously as a ceremonial county or a geographic county. These
counties also form geographic and statistical units. In most cases they
comprise an administrative county and one or more unitary authorities.
In other cases they comprise one or more unitary authorities without an
administrative county. Greater London and each of the metropolitan
counties also constitute ceremonial and geographic counties. These areas
are known as ceremonial counties because each has a lord lieutenant and
a high sheriff who serve as the representatives of the monarch in the
county and who represent the county at the ceremonial functions of the
monarchy.

Finally, every part of the United Kingdom lies within what is known
as a historic county. The historic counties have formed geographic and
cultural units since the Middle Ages, and they historically had a
variety of administrative powers. The Local Government Act of 1888
regularized the administrative powers of counties and reassigned them to
new administrative counties with the same names as the historic counties
but with different boundaries in some cases. Successive local government
reorganizations in the 1970s and ’90s redrew the boundaries of
administrative units in the United Kingdom so that no remaining
administrative unit corresponds directly to a historic county, although
many administrative and geographic counties and other local government
units carry the names of historic counties. Still, even though they lack
administrative power, historic counties remain important cultural units.
They serve as a focus for local identity, and cultural institutions such
as sporting associations are often organized by historic county.

JusticeRecruited from successful practicing lawyers, judges in the United
Kingdom are appointed and virtually irremovable. The courts alone
declare the law, but the courts accept any act of Parliament as part of
the law. As courts in the United Kingdom do not possess the power of
judicial review, no court can declare a statute invalid.

An accused person is presumed innocent until proved guilty. The
courts strictly enforce a law of contempt to prevent newspapers or
television from prejudicing the trial of the accused before a jury.
Verdicts in criminal cases rest on a majority vote of the jury (in
Scotland a simple majority, in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland with
no more than two dissenting votes). Capital punishment was abolished in
1965. Almost all defendants in criminal cases in the Crown Courts (in
Scotland the High Court of Justiciary), which deal with all serious
cases, are granted publicly funded legal aid.

More than 90 percent of criminal cases in England and Wales are tried
and determined by about 30,000 justices of the peace, who are unpaid
laypersons, or by the more than 60 stipendiary (paid) magistrates, who
are trained lawyers. More serious crimes also come initially before a
magistrate’s court. The system is similar in Northern Ireland, but in
Scotland district and sheriff courts try most criminal cases. The police
must bring an arrested person before a magistrate within 36 hours, but
the magistrate can authorize further detention without charge for up to
96 hours. Only 1 percent of suspects are held without charge for more
than 24 hours, however. The magistrate decides whether the accused
should be held on bail or in custody.

The vast majority of civil actions in England, Wales, and Northern
Ireland are tried in local county courts, whose jurisdiction is limited
by the nature of the action and the amount of money at stake. In
Scotland, sheriff courts and the Court of Session try all civil actions.

Appeals in civil and criminal matters move from the High and Crown
courts to the Court of Appeal, which, in cases of legal importance, can
allow a final appeal to the judges in the House of Lords. In Scotland
only civil matters may be appealed to the House of Lords.

Political processAll citizens aged 18 or older are eligible to vote in parliamentary and
local elections as well as in elections to the European Parliament. All
other public posts are filled by appointment. Each member of the House
of Commons represents one parliamentary constituency. Constituency
populations historically have varied considerably, with those in
Scotland and Wales being much smaller than those in England. This
overrepresentation for Scotland and Wales dates from the 18th century
and the 1940s, respectively; however, because of the wide array of
powers vested in the Scottish Parliament, the disparity in constituency
size between England and Scotland was eliminated at the May 2005
election, when Scotland’s seats in the House of Commons were reduced
from 72 to 59. Constituencies in Northern Ireland are slightly smaller
than those in England. As there are no residency requirements, many
members of Parliament reside outside the constituency that they
represent.

Registration of voters is compulsory and carried out annually.
Candidates for election to Parliament or a local council are normally
chosen by the local parties. There are no primary elections along U.S.
lines, for example, nor would such a system be easy because the timing
of general elections is unpredictable.

The House of Commons is elected for a maximum term of five years. At
any time during those five years, the prime minister has the right to
ask the monarch to dissolve Parliament and call a general election. A
government with a working majority is expected to govern for the greater
part of its term, though it rarely runs to the end. An early election
may take place if there is no working majority, and the prime minister
need give only 17 working days’ notice of a general election.
Parliamentary candidates’ campaign spending is strictly limited. Since
2000, national party expenditure, which was previously unrestricted, has
been limited to a maximum of £20 million per party. In addition, each
party is allocated free election broadcasts on the main television
channels. No paid political advertising is permitted on television or
radio. These provisions and the uncertainty about the timing of an
election produce campaigns that are, by international standards,
unusually brief and relatively inexpensive.

A two-party system has existed in the United Kingdom since the late
17th century. Since the mid-1920s the dominant groupings have been the
Conservative Party and the Labour Party. However, several smaller
parties—e.g., the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish and Welsh nationalist
parties, and loyalist (unionist) and republican (nationalist) political
parties in Northern Ireland—have gained representation in Parliament,
especially since the 1970s. The two-party system is one of the
outstanding features of British politics and generally has produced firm
and decisive government. The practice of simple plurality voting in
single-member constituencies has tended to exaggerate the majority of
the winning party and to diminish the representation and influence of
third parties, except for those with a geographic base of support (e.g.,
Plaid Cymru–The Party of Wales).

The two-party system, together with uncertainty about the timing of a
general election, has produced the British phenomenon of the official
opposition. Its decisive characteristic is that the main opposition
party forms an alternative, or “shadow,” government, ready at any time
to take office, in recognition of which the leader of the opposition
receives an official salary.

Despite several high-profile female monarchs and politicians, men
have dominated politics in the United Kingdom for centuries. While women
have made strong political gains in much of western Europe, especially
in Scandinavia, breakthroughs for women in British national elections
have been rare. Throughout much of the 20th century, only a few women
won elections; before the 1980s the high point for female representation
in the House of Commons was 29 in 1964. Indeed, many women who were able
to win election to the House of Commons were of aristocratic stock or
widows of influential politicians. One such exception was Margaret
Thatcher, who was first elected to Parliament in 1959 and became
Britain’s first female prime minister in 1979. However, during the 1980s
women began to make gains, with 60 female candidates winning seats in
Parliament in 1992. In order to increase its appeal to women and
increase the number of women MPs, the Labour Party adopted a policy of
all-women shortlists for half of its “target seats” (i.e., seats where
an existing Labour MP was standing down or where Conservative MPs had
small majorities) for the 1997 election, and, though the policy
subsequently was ruled in violation of equal rights laws, 120 women—101
from the Labour Party—were elected to the House of Commons. Even with
the law invalidated, 118 women won election in 2001. In addition to
women, minorities have had some success in national elections. There
consistently have been several Jewish members of the House of Commons,
and Sikh and Muslim candidates also have had limited success.

SecurityThe United Kingdom has no national police force or any minister
exclusively responsible for the police. Each provincial force is
maintained by a police authority, a committee elected by several local
councils. One of its important tasks is to appoint and dismiss the chief
constable. Once appointed, the chief constable has the sole right of
appointment, promotion, discipline, and deployment of his force.

The commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police has a status similar
to that of a chief constable. Scotland Yard (the criminal investigation
department of the Metropolitan Police) assists other police forces and
handles the British responsibilities of the International Criminal
Police Organization (Interpol).

The British police, popularly known as “bobbies,” wear a uniform that
is nonmilitary in appearance. Their only regular weapon is a short,
wooden truncheon, which they keep out of sight and may not employ except
in self-defense or to restore order. Police on a dangerous mission may
carry firearms for that specific occasion.

Responsibility for national defense rests with the prime minister and
the cabinet. The secretary of state for defense formulates defense
policy. His ministry has responsibility for the armed forces. The
secretary of state is advised by the chief of the defense staff, aided
by the chiefs of the three services—the army, navy, and air force.
Britain has been an active member of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), deploying its troops in various theatres of
conflict. Internal security and intelligence are handled by the MI5
government agency, and foreign intelligence services are carried out by
MI6.

Health and welfareThe National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) provides comprehensive health care
throughout the United Kingdom. The NHS provides medical care through a
tripartite structure of primary care, hospitals, and community health
care. The main element in primary care is the system of general
practitioners (family doctors), who provide preventive and curative care
and who refer patients to hospital and specialist services. All
consultations with a general practitioner under the NHS are free.

The other major types of primary medical care are dentistry and
pharmaceutical and opthalmic services. These are the only services of
the NHS for which charges are levied, though persons under age 16, past
retirement, or with low incomes are usually exempt. Everyone else must
pay charges that are below the full cost of the services involved.

Under the Department of Health in England are four regional health
directors who oversee area health authorities, whose major
responsibility is to run the hospital service. (Overseeing the health
authorities in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland is the
responsibility of their respective parliament or assembly.) Hospitals
absorb more than two-thirds of the NHS budget. All hospital treatment
under the NHS is free, including consultations with doctors, nursing,
drugs, and intensive care, whatever the type of medical problem and
however long the hospital stay. Hospital doctors are paid a salary
rather than a fee for service but can combine salaried work for the NHS
with a private practice.

The Community Health Service has three functions: to provide
preventive health services; to act as a liaison with local government,
especially over matters of public health; and to cooperate with local
government personal social service departments to enable health and
personal care to be handled together whenever possible.

Individuals can register with any NHS general practitioner in their
area who is prepared to add them to his or her list of patients. Anyone
who wishes to change to another doctor may do so. Except in emergencies,
patients are referred to a hospital by their general practitioner,
allowing patients an element of choice.

Apart from the charges mentioned above, treatment under the NHS is
free to the patient. The service is almost entirely funded by government
revenues, with less than 5 percent of NHS revenue coming from charges.
This arrangement is unique among industrialized countries. There is no
substantial reliance on private medical insurance (as, for example, in
the United States).

The NHS budget, like that for any other government service, is
determined by negotiations between the Treasury and the spending
departments, as modified by subsequent discussion in the cabinet. The
resulting figure is a budget for the NHS as a whole. The division of
money throughout the United Kingdom is partly constrained by a formula
designed to improve the geographic distribution of medical resources.
Each regional authority divides its total funds among the area health
authorities.

Alongside the NHS is a system of private medical care both for
primary care and for hospital treatment. Although it grew somewhat in
the 1980s and ’90s, the sector absorbs only about one-tenth of the total
expenditure on doctors and hospital inpatient care. Most private care is
financed by voluntary private medical insurance.

Although the NHS is a popular institution, it is not without
problems: resources are scarce, many hospital buildings are old, there
are waiting lists for nonurgent conditions, the distribution of health
care by social class and by region is less equal than many would wish,
and management needs to be improved. The advantages, however, are
enormous. The NHS is very inexpensive by international standards; in the
late 1990s, for example, the United Kingdom spent about half the
percentage of GDP on health care as the United States. Despite such low
spending, health in the United Kingdom, measured in terms of infant
mortality and life expectancy, matches that in comparable countries. The
variation in the quality and quantity of treatment by income level is
smaller than in most other countries. The system is able to direct
resources toward specific regions and specific types of care. Treatment
is free, whatever the extent and duration of illness, no one is denied
care because of low income, and no one fears financial ruin as a result
of treatment.

Cash benefitsThe current system of cash benefits, though substantially modified since
its introduction in 1946, is based on the 1942 “Beveridge Report.” Every
employed person pays a national insurance contribution, which since 1975
has taken the form of a percentage of earnings, although contributions
are due only on amounts up to about 150 percent of nationwide average
earnings. Employers collect the contribution, and there is also an
employer contribution. Separate arrangements exist for the
self-employed. The revenue from contributions goes into the National
Insurance Fund.

Insured individuals are entitled to unemployment compensation, cash
benefits during sickness or disability, and a retirement pension. There
are also benefits for individuals injured in work-related accidents and
for widows. Whether or not they receive an insurance benefit, all are
eligible for a noncontributory benefit. Employees who lose their jobs
through no fault of their own receive lump-sum redundancy, or severance,
payments, whose cost is met in part by their employers and in part from
a general levy on employers.

The major noncontributory benefits, paid out of general tax revenues,
offer poverty relief to individuals and families whose income and
savings fall below some prescribed level. The benefit of last resort is
income support (formerly called the supplementary benefit); it is
payable to individuals whose entitlement to insurance benefits has been
exhausted or has left them with a very low income and to those who never
had any entitlement to an insurance benefit. Other means-tested benefits
assist low-paid working families with children and help people on low
incomes with their housing costs. An important class of noncontributory
benefits is not means-tested, the major example being the child benefit,
a weekly tax-free payment for each child, usually payable to the mother.

The 1946 system has changed substantially over the years, with a
burst of reform in the mid-1970s, including an increase in
earnings-related pensions, and another in the late 1990s. In the late
1990s a working-families tax credit replaced income support for low-paid
working households with children, and the government introduced a
national minimum wage. The government also introduced a children’s tax
credit to provide additional support to low- and middle-income families.
There was a review of the benefit system in 1985 that changed the
detailed workings of several benefits in 1988 but left the basic
structure intact.

HousingDuring the mid-20th century, local governments developed council houses
(public housing estates) throughout the United Kingdom. At public
housing’s peak, about 1970, local governments owned 30 percent of all
housing in the country. Under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act of 1977
(which amended older legislation), local governments have a statutory
obligation in certain circumstances to find housing for homeless
families. Partly for that reason, they keep a substantial stock of
housing for rent, maintain waiting lists, and allocate housing according
to need. Following the introduction of “right to buy” legislation in
1980, many tenants became owner-occupiers. By the beginning of the 21st
century, the proportion of homes owned by local governments had almost
halved.

EducationPrimary and secondary educationOverall responsibility for education in England rests with the secretary
of state for children, schools, and families, who is accountable to
Parliament and responsible for the health, education, and welfare of
young people. In Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, separate
departments of education are headed by ministers who answer to the
country’s parliament or assembly. Primary and secondary education are a
local responsibility. Local Education Authorities (LEAs) employ the
teachers and are the major providers of education. In addition, a few
schools are run by voluntary bodies, mostly religious. There is also a
small private sector.

Primary education is free and compulsory from age 5 to 11. LEAs
provide secondary education, which is organized in a variety of ways,
for children aged 11 to 19; it is free and compulsory to age 16.
Teachers employed by the LEAs are paid on an agreed national scale. The
state finances primary and secondary education out of central and local
tax revenues. Most expenditures take place at the local level, though
about half of local revenues derive from the central government.

In most parts of the United Kingdom, secondary schools are
comprehensive—that is, they are open to pupils of all abilities. Pupils
may stay on past the minimum leaving age of 16 to earn a certificate or
take public examinations that qualify them for higher education. In much
of Northern Ireland and in some scattered LEAs in Great Britain
(particularly in Kent), pupils take an intelligence examination at age
11, on the basis of which they are assigned to one of two kinds of
secondary schools: grammar schools, which prepare them for higher
education; or secondary modern schools, which prepare them for jobs that
do not require higher education.

The secretary of state has the duty to establish a national
curriculum applicable to all state schools. Individual schools control
their own management and finance and may apply to opt out of control by
local authorities. Schools are required to maintain open enrollment.

Private schoolsAlongside the state sector, a small number of private schools (often
called “public schools”) provide education for about one-twentieth of
children. Their existence is controversial. It is argued that private
schools divert gifted children and teachers and scarce financial
resources from state schools and that they perpetuate economic and
social divisions. The counterarguments focus on their high quality, the
beneficial effects of competition, and parents’ freedom of choice.

Higher education
Universities historically have been independent and self-governing;
however, they have close links with the central government because a
large proportion of their income derives from public funds. Higher
education also takes place in other colleges.

Students do not have a right to a place at a university; they are
carefully selected by examination performance, and the dropout rate is
low by international standards. Most students receive state-funded
grants inversely related to their parents’ income to cover the tuition
fees. In addition, most students receive state-funded loans to cover
living expenses. Foreign students and British students taking a degree
at an overseas university are not generally eligible for public funding.

Public funds flow to universities through recurrent grants and in the
form of tuition fees; universities also derive income from foreign
students and from various private-sector sources. After a major
expansion in the 1960s, the system came under pressure in the 1980s.
Public funding became more restricted, and the grant system no longer
supported students adequately. The government introduced the present
system of student loans to replace dwindling grants for living expenses
and established higher-education funding councils in each part of the
United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) to
coordinate state support of higher education.

The Open University—a unique innovation in higher education—is a
degree-granting institution that provides courses of study for adults
through television, radio, and local study programs. Applicants must
apply for a number of places limited at any time by the availability of
teachers.

Nicholas A. Barr
Peter Jon Kellner

Cultural life

English culture tends to dominate the formal cultural life of the United
Kingdom, but Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have also made
important contributions, as have the cultures that British colonialism
brought into contact with the homeland. Scotland, Wales, and Northern
Ireland share fully in the common culture but also preserve lively
traditions that predate political union with England.

Widespread changes in the United Kingdom’s cultural life occurred
after 1945. The most remarkable was perhaps the emergence first of
Liverpool and then of London in the 1960s as a world centre of popular
culture. The Beatles were only the first and best-known of the many
British rock groups to win a world following. British clothing designers
for a time led the world as innovators of new styles of dress for both
men and women, and the brightly coloured outfits sold in London’s
Carnaby Street and King’s Road shops briefly became more symbolic of
Britain than the traditionally staid tailoring of Savile Row.

Underlying both this development and a similar if less-remarked
renewal of vigour in more traditional fields were several important
social developments in the decades after World War II. Most evident was
the rising standard of education. The number of pupils going on to
higher education increased dramatically after World War II and was
matched by a major expansion in the number of universities and other
institutions of higher education. In society in general there was a
marked increase in leisure. Furthermore, immigration, particularly from
the West Indies and South Asia, introduced new cultural currents to the
United Kingdom and contributed to innovation in music, film, literature,
and other arts.

Daily life and social customsThe United Kingdom’s cultural traditions are reflective of the country’s
heterogeneity and its central importance in world affairs over the past
several centuries. Each constituent part of the United Kingdom—England,
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland—maintains its own unique customs,
traditions, cuisine, and festivals. Moreover, as Britain’s empire
spanned the globe, it became a focal point of immigration, especially
after the independence of its colonies, from its colonial possessions.
As a result, immigrants from all corners of the world have entered the
United Kingdom and settled throughout the country, leaving indelible
imprints on British culture. Thus, at the beginning of the 21st century,
age-old English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh customs stood alongside the
rich traditions of Afro-Caribbean, Asian, and Muslim immigrants, placing
the United Kingdom among the world’s most cosmopolitan and diverse
countries.

The artsFrom the plays of William Shakespeare to the music of the Sex Pistols,
British art has had a tremendous impact on world culture. Writers from
every part of the United Kingdom, joined by immigrants from parts of the
former British Empire and the Commonwealth, have enriched the English
language and world literature alike with their work. British studios,
playwrights, directors, and actors have been remarkable pioneers of
stage and screen. British comedians have brought laughter to diverse
audiences and been widely imitated; British composers have found devoted
listeners around the world, as have various contemporary pop groups and
singer-songwriters; and British philosophers have had a tremendous
influence in shaping the course of scientific and moral inquiry. From
medieval time to the present, this extraordinary flowering of the arts
has been encouraged at every level of society. Early royal patronage
played an important role in the development of the arts in Britain, and
since the mid 20th century the British government has done much to
foster their growth.

The independent Arts Council, formed in 1946, supports many kinds of
contemporary creative and performing arts. The state-owned British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and privately owned Channel Four
Television are also major patrons of the arts, especially music and
film. The work of filmmakers and actors throughout the United Kingdom is
supported by the Film Council, a government board that helps fund
productions and secure film-related services. This support has
contributed to the great expansion of the market for cultural goods and
of audiences for the arts generally. As in many other highly developed
countries, the clash of tastes and values between generations and, to
some extent, between social classes has occasionally been sharp, as it
was in the 1960s and ’70s. However, the overall effect of social and
financial diversity has been to make culture a major British industry,
which employs more than a million people and commands one-sixth of the
world’s cultural exports, three times greater than Britain’s share of
world trade overall.

Cultural institutionsThe United Kingdom contains many cultural treasures. It is home to a
wide range of learned societies, including the British Academy, the
Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The
British Museum in London houses historical artifacts from all parts of
the globe. London is also home to many museums (e.g., the National
Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate galleries, the Imperial
War Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum) and theatres (e.g., the
Royal National Theatre and those in the world-renowned West End theatre
district). Cultural institutions also abound throughout the country.
Among the many libraries and museums of interest in Scotland, Wales, and
Northern Ireland are the Royal Museum, the Museum of Scotland, and the
Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh, the Museum of Scottish Country Life in
Glasgow, the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, and the Ulster Museum
in Belfast.

Sports and recreationThe global spread of sports that had their origins in Britain was
central to the development of modern sports in the 18th and 19th
centuries and is one of the British Empire’s important cultural
legacies. The modern game of football (soccer) is generally accepted to
have originated in England. The Football Association, the game’s first
organization, was founded in England in 1863, and the first football
match played between England and Scotland—the oldest rivalry in the
sport—was at Glasgow in 1872. English football fans can follow three
national divisions and the celebrated premiership, which includes such
legendary clubs as Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool. Scotland
has three national divisions as well and a premiership that features the
Celtic and Rangers clubs of Glasgow; Wales and Northern Ireland also
have national leagues. The Scottish and English national teams regularly
appear in international competitions. In 1966 England hosted and won the
World Cup; it was the third host nation to win the championship.

Rugby and cricket have also long enjoyed great popularity in Britain.
According to tradition, rugby began in 1823 at Rugby School in England.
In 1871 the Rugby Football Union was formed as the English governing
body, and the rival Rugby Football League was founded in 1895. England,
Scotland, and Wales all have club competitions in both union and league
versions of the game. The three also send national teams to the Rugby
Union Five Nations’ Cup and World Cup tournaments. Cricket’s origins may
date to 13th-century England, and county competition in England was
formally organized in the 19th century. International matches, known as
tests, began in 1877 with a match between England and Australia.

Great Britain has attended every modern Olympic Games, beginning with
the first competition in Athens, Greece, in 1896. Britain has hosted the
Games twice in London, in 1908 and 1948. At the 1896 Games weight lifter
Launceston Elliot was the first Briton to win a gold medal, and in 1908
figure skater Madge Cave Syers became the first female athlete to win a
medal in the Winter Games. British athletes have won hundreds of medals
over the years, making especially strong showings in athletics, tennis,
rowing, yachting, and figure skating. Several British athletes have put
forth memorable performances in track-and-field events, including
sprinter Harold Abrahams in the 1920s, middle-distance runners Sebastian
Coe and Steve Ovett, and two-time decathlon gold medalist Daley Thompson
in the 1970s and ’80s. At the 2000 Summer Games rower Steve Redgrave
accomplished the rare feat of earning gold medals in five consecutive
Games.

Britain is also home to several important international sports
competitions. The British Open golf tournament is held annually, often
at the world-renowned course at St. Andrews in Scotland. The All-England
(Wimbledon) Championships is one of the world’s leading tennis
competitions. Celebrated horse-racing events include the Royal Ascot,
the Derby, and the Grand National steeplechase. The Henley Royal Regatta
is the world’s premiere rowing championship.

Although the United Kingdom’s climate often rewards staying indoors,
the British are enthusiasts of outdoor leisure activities and are well
served by an extensive network of hiking and bicycling paths, national
parks, and other amenities. Especially popular are the Lake District,
which preserves a scenic area commemorated in many works by English
poets; the rugged Scottish highlands and Inner Hebrides islands; and the
mountainous Welsh region of Snowdonia National Park, a magnet for
climbers from around the world.

Media and publishingThe communications media—press, publishing, broadcasting, and
entertainment—reach audiences ranging from the millions for television,
radio, and national newspapers to small minorities for local papers,
specialist periodicals, or experimental theatre and film. In addition to
their presence in print, most newspapers disseminate information through
the Internet, to which access grew rapidly during the late 1990s. By the
early 21st century about one-third of all households had personal
computers with access to the Internet.

NewspapersIn both sales and reputation the national papers published in London
dominate. Within the national newspaper business in the United Kingdom,
a distinction has developed between popular papers (often tabloids) with
multimillion circulation and quality broadsheet papers with relatively
small sales. Four “populars” account for about five-sixths of the total
morning paper circulation. Generally, British newspapers are not
formally tied to specific political parties. However, most display clear
political sympathies that are usually determined by their proprietors.
The tabloid Daily Mail and broadsheet Daily Telegraph have consistently
supported the Conservative Party, while the tabloid Daily Mirror and
broadsheet The Guardian (published in both London and Manchester)
normally support Labour. The Times of London is one of the world’s
oldest newspapers. The United Kingdom’s biggest-selling newspaper, The
Sun—whose popularity since it was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News
International company in 1969 has stemmed from a diet of sensational
personality-based news stories, show-business gossip, lively sports
reporting, and pictures of scantily dressed young women—supported Labour
in the early 1970s, switched to the Conservative Party under Margaret
Thatcher in 1979, and switched back again to Labour in the late 1990s.
In England there are also several regional dailies and weeklies and
national weeklies—some targeting particular ethnic communities.

The Welsh press includes several daily papers (e.g., the Western Mail
and the South Wales Echo) as well as a number of weekly
English-language, bilingual, or Welsh-language newspapers. Scotland has
national daily newspapers based in Edinburgh and Glasgow with wide
circulation (e.g., The Scotsman, the Daily Record, and The Herald) and a
number of regional weeklies as well. Northern Ireland’s daily papers
(e.g., the Belfast Telegraph and the Irish News) are all published in
Belfast. There is a large periodical press in the United Kingdom that
ranges from such traditional publications as The Economist, The
Spectator, and New Statesman to more specialized and, often, more
mercurial journals.

BroadcastingThe BBC, which had been established as an independent public corporation
in 1927, held a monopoly of both radio and television broadcasting until
1954, when the Independent Television Authority (ITA) was established to
provide the facilities for commercial television companies. The ITA’s
successor today is the Office of Communications (Ofcom). Created by the
Communications Act of 2003, Ofcom is responsible for regulating all
commercial radio and television services, including satellite and cable,
as well as all wired, wireless, and broadband telecommunications.
Commercial television broadcasters include Channel Four and the ITV
network. Almost every household receives the terrestrial television
channels; by the early 21st century about 1 in 4 households also could
receive several dozen additional channels by satellite or cable. The
satellite and cable market is dominated by BSkyB, partly owned by
Murdoch’s News International, which operates 11 channels of its own
(including a 24-hour news channel and three sports channels) and also
distributes channels for other companies via its satellite and digital
networks.

The BBC draws its revenue from license fees (on a scale fixed by the
government) from persons owning television sets. It is governed by 12
individuals appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime
minister, with separate governors for Scotland, Wales, and Northern
Ireland. Ofcom, with a governing board of 10 members, licenses and
regulates commercial television companies, which earn revenue by selling
advertising time and (in the case of some satellite and cable companies)
subscription and pay-per-view channels. The BBC operates two terrestrial
television channels, and Ofcom operates three. On its second television
channel, the BBC tends to offer programs of above-average intellectual
and cultural interest—competition that the Channel Four commercial
channel meets with its own cultural programs. The BBC also provides a
24-hour news service and a channel devoted to live proceedings of
Parliament to people able to receive satellite, cable, or digital
television services. In addition, BBC Radio operates a comprehensive
external service, broadcasting around the world in more than 40
languages, as well as a world service in English 24 hours a day.

Both the BBC and terrestrial commercial channels supply educational
programs for schools and for adult studies. The Open University,
offering degree courses to people who lack formal academic
qualifications, uses educational programs that are broadcast by the BBC;
these programs are backed by correspondence courses.

The BBC and Ofcom are public bodies that in the last resort can be
controlled by the government, and Parliament can alter the terms of
their authority. The government has the statutory power to veto a
broadcast, but only rarely does it interfere with the day-to-day
management of the BBC or Ofcom. There are more than 30 BBC local radio
stations and more than 200 commercial local radio stations serving the
United Kingdom.

For a more detailed discussion of cultural life in England, Scotland,
Wales, and Northern Ireland, see the cultural life sections of the
articles England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Peter Jon Kellner
Ed.

History

This discussion encompasses the history of England and Great Britain.
Histories of the other three constituent parts of the United Kingdom can
be found in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Ancient Britain Apart from a few short references in classical literature, knowledge of
Britain before the Roman conquest (begun ad 43) is derived entirely from
archaeological research. It is thus lacking in detail, for archaeology
can rarely identify personalities, motives, or exact dates. All that is
available is a picture of successive cultures and some knowledge of
economic development. But even in Roman times Britain lay on the
periphery of the civilized world, and Roman historians, for the most
part, provide for that period only a framework into which the results of
archaeological research can be fitted. Britain truly emerged into the
light of history only after the Saxon settlements in the 5th century ad.

Until late in the Mesolithic period, Britain formed part of the
continental landmass and was easily accessible to migrating hunters. The
cutting of the land bridge, c. 6000–5000 bc, had important effects:
migration became more difficult and remained for long impossible to
large numbers. Thus Britain developed insular characteristics, absorbing
and adapting rather than fully participating in successive continental
cultures. And within the island geography worked to a similar end; the
fertile southeast was more receptive of influence from the adjacent
continent than were the less-accessible hill areas of the west and
north. Yet in certain periods the use of sea routes brought these too
within the ambit of the continent.

From the end of the Ice Age (c. 11,000 bc), there was a gradual
amelioration of climate leading to the replacement of tundra by forest
and of reindeer hunting by that of red deer and elk. Valuable insight on
contemporary conditions was gained by the excavation of a lakeside
settlement at Star Carr, North Yorkshire, which was occupied for about
20 successive winters by hunting people in the 8th millennium bc.

Pre-Roman Britain

Neolithic periodA major change occurred c. 4000 bc with the introduction of agriculture
by Neolithic immigrants from the coasts of western and possibly
northwestern Europe. They were pastoralists as well as tillers of the
soil. Tools were commonly of flint won by mining, but axes of volcanic
rock were also traded by prospectors exploiting distant outcrops. The
dead were buried in communal graves of two main kinds: in the west,
tombs were built out of stone and concealed under mounds of rubble; in
the stoneless eastern areas the dead were buried under long barrows
(mounds of earth), which normally contained timber structures. Other
evidence of religion comes from enclosures (e.g., Windmill Hill,
Wiltshire), which are now believed to have been centres of ritual and of
seasonal tribal feasting. From them developed, late in the 3rd
millennium, more clearly ceremonial ditch-enclosed earthworks known as
henge monuments. Some, like Durrington Walls, Wiltshire, are of great
size and enclose subsidiary timber circles. British Neolithic culture
thus developed its own individuality.

Bronze Age Early in the 2nd millennium or perhaps even earlier, from c. 2300 bc,
changes were introduced by the Beaker folk from the Low Countries and
the middle Rhine. These people buried their dead in individual graves,
often with the drinking vessel that gives their culture its name. The
earliest of them still used flint; later groups, however, brought a
knowledge of metallurgy and were responsible for the exploitation of
gold and copper deposits in Britain and Ireland. They may also have
introduced an Indo-European language. Trade was dominated by the
chieftains of Wessex, whose rich graves testify to their success.
Commerce was far-flung, in one direction to Ireland and Cornwall and in
the other to central Europe and the Baltic, whence amber was imported.
Amber bead spacers from Wessex have been found in the shaft graves at
Mycenae in Greece. It was, perhaps, this prosperity that enabled the
Wessex chieftains to construct the remarkable monument of shaped sarsens
(large sandstones) known as Stonehenge III. Originally a late Neolithic
henge, Stonehenge was uniquely transformed in Beaker times with a circle
of large bluestone monoliths transported from southwest Wales.

Little is known in detail of the early and middle Bronze Age. Because
of present ignorance of domestic sites, these periods are mainly defined
by technological advances and changes in tools or weapons. In general,
the southeast of Britain continued in close contact with the continent
and the north and west with Ireland.

From about 1200 bc there is clearer evidence for agriculture in the
south; the farms consisted of circular huts in groups with small oblong
fields and stock enclosures. This type of farm became standard in
Britain down to and into the Roman period. From the 8th century onward,
British communities developed close contacts with their continental
European neighbours. Some of the earliest hill forts in Britain were
constructed in this period (e.g., Beacon Hill, near Ivinghoe,
Buckinghamshire; or Finavon, Angus); though formally belonging to the
late Bronze Age, they usher in the succeeding period.

Iron Age Knowledge of iron, introduced in the 7th century, was a merely
incidental fact: it does not signify a change of population. The
centuries 700–400 bc saw continued development of contact with
continental Europe. Yet the greater availability of iron facilitated
land clearance and thus the growth of population. The earliest
ironsmiths made daggers of the Hallstatt type but of a distinctively
British form. The settlements were also of a distinctively British type,
with the traditional round house, the “Celtic” system of farming with
its small fields, and storage pits for grain.

The century following 600 bc saw the building of many large hill
forts; these suggest the existence of powerful chieftains and the growth
of strife as increasing population created pressures on the land. By 300
bc swords were making their appearance once more in place of daggers.
Finally, beginning in the 3rd century, a British form of La Tène Celtic
art was developed to decorate warlike equipment such as scabbards,
shields, and helmets, and eventually also bronze mirrors and even
domestic pottery. During the 2nd century the export of Cornish tin,
noted before 300 by Pytheas of Massalia, a Greek explorer, continued;
evidence of its destination is provided by the Paul (Cornwall) hoard of
north Italian silver coins. In the 1st century bc this trade was in the
hands of the Veneti of Brittany; their conquest (56 bc) by Julius
Caesar, who destroyed their fleet, seems to have put an end to it.

By 200 Britain had fully developed its insular “Celtic” character.
The emergence, however, of the British tribes known to Roman historians
was due to limited settlement by tribesmen from Belgic Gaul. Coin finds
suggest that southeast Britain was socially and economically bound to
Belgic Gaul. The result was a distinctive culture in southeast Britain
(especially in Kent and north of the Thames) which represented a later
phase of the continental Celtic La Tène culture. Its people used coins
and the potter’s wheel and cremated their dead, and their better
equipment enabled them to begin the exploitation of heavier soils for
agriculture.

Roman Britain

The conquestJulius Caesar conquered Gaul between 58 and 50 bc and invaded Britain in
55 or 54 bc, thereby bringing the island into close contact with the
Roman world. Caesar’s description of Britain at the time of his
invasions is the first coherent account extant. From about 20 bc it is
possible to distinguish two principal powers: the Catuvellauni north of
the Thames led by Tasciovanus, successor of Caesar’s adversary
Cassivellaunus, and, south of the river, the kingdom of the Atrebates
ruled by Commius and his sons Tincommius, Eppillus, and Verica.
Tasciovanus was succeeded in about ad 5 by his son Cunobelinus, who,
during a long reign, established power all over the southeast, which he
ruled from Camulodunum (Colchester). Beyond these kingdoms lay the Iceni
in what is now Norfolk, the Corieltavi in the Midlands, the Dobuni
(Dobunni) in the area of Gloucestershire, and the Durotriges in that of
Dorset, all of whom issued coins and probably had Belgic rulers. Behind
these again lay further independent tribes—the Dumnonii of Devon, the
Brigantes in the north, and the Silures and Ordovices in Wales. The
Belgic and semi-Belgic tribes later formed the civilized nucleus of the
Roman province and thus contributed greatly to Roman Britain.

The client relationships that Caesar had established with certain
British tribes were extended by Augustus. In particular, the Atrebatic
kings welcomed Roman aid in their resistance to Catuvellaunian
expansion. The decision of the emperor Claudius to conquer the island
was the result partly of his personal ambition, partly of British
aggression. Verica had been driven from his kingdom and appealed for
help, and it may have been calculated that a hostile Catuvellaunian
supremacy would endanger stability across the Channel. Under Aulus
Plautius an army of four legions was assembled, together with a number
of auxiliary regiments consisting of cavalry and infantry raised among
warlike tribes subject to the empire. After delay caused by the troops’
unwillingness to cross the ocean, which they then regarded as the
boundary of the human world, a landing was made at Richborough, Kent, in
ad 43. The British under Togodumnus and Caratacus, sons and successors
of Cunobelinus, were taken by surprise and defeated. They retired to
defend the Medway crossing near Rochester but were again defeated in a
hard battle. The way to Camulodunum lay open, but Plautius halted at the
Thames to await the arrival of the emperor, who took personal command of
the closing stages of the campaign. In one short season the main
military opposition had been crushed: Togodumnus was dead and Caratacus
had fled to Wales. The rest of Britain was by no means united, for
Belgic expansion had created tensions. Some tribes submitted, and
subduing the rest remained the task for the year 44. For this purpose
smaller expeditionary forces were formed consisting of single legions or
parts of legions with their auxilia (subsidiary allied troops). The
best-documented campaign is that of Legion II under its legate Vespasian
starting from Chichester, where the Atrebatic kingdom was restored; the
Isle of Wight was taken and the hill forts of Dorset reduced. Legion IX
advanced into Lincolnshire, and Legion XIV probably across the Midlands
toward Leicester. Colchester was the chief base, but the fortresses of
individual legions at this stage have not yet been identified.

By the year 47, when Plautius was succeeded as commanding officer by
Ostorius Scapula, a frontier had been established from Exeter to the
Humber, based on the road known as the Fosse Way; from this fact it
appears that Claudius did not plan the annexation of the whole island
but only of the arable southeast. The intransigence of the tribes of
Wales, spurred on by Caratacus, however, caused Scapula to occupy the
lowlands beyond the Fosse Way up to the River Severn and to move forward
his forces into this area for the struggle with the Silures and
Ordovices. The Roman forces were strengthened by the addition of Legion
XX, released for this purpose by the foundation of a veteran settlement
(colonia) at Camulodunum in the year 49. The colonia would form a
strategic reserve as well as setting the Britons an example of Roman
urban organization and life. A provincial centre for the worship of the
emperor was also established. Scapula’s right flank was secured by the
treaty relationship that had been established with Cartimandua, queen of
the Brigantes. Hers was the largest kingdom in Britain, occupying the
whole area between Derbyshire and the Tyne; unfortunately it lacked
stability, nor was it united behind its queen, who lost popularity when
she surrendered the British resistance leader, Caratacus, to the Romans.
Nevertheless, with occasional Roman military support, Cartimandua was
maintained in power until 69 against the opposition led by her husband,
Venutius, and this enabled Roman governors to concentrate on Wales.

By ad 60 much had been achieved; Suetonius Paulinus, governor from 59
to 61, was invading the island of Anglesey, the last stronghold of
independence, when a serious setback occurred: this was the rebellion of
Boudicca, queen of the Iceni. Under its king Prasutagus the tribe of the
Iceni had enjoyed a position of alliance and independence; but on his
death (60) the territory was forcibly annexed and outrages occurred.
Boudicca was able to rally other tribes to her assistance; chief of
these were the Trinovantes of Essex, who had many grievances against the
settlers of Camulodunum for their arrogant seizure of lands. Roman
forces were distant and scattered; and, before peace could be restored,
the rebels had sacked Camulodunum, Verulamium (St. Albans), and London,
the three chief centres of Romanized life in Britain. Paulinus acted
harshly after his victory, but the procurator of the province, Julius
Classicianus, with the revenues in mind and perhaps also because, as a
Gaul by birth, he possessed a truer vision of provincial partnership
with Rome, brought about his recall.

In the first 20 years of occupation some progress had been made in
spreading Roman civilization. Towns had been founded, the imperial cult
had been established, and merchants were busily introducing the Britons
to material benefits. It was not, however, until the Flavian period, ad
69–96, that real advances were made in this field. With the occupation
of Wales by Julius Frontinus (governor from 74 to 78) and the advance
into northern Scotland by Gnaeus Julius Agricola (78–84), troops were
removed from southern Britain, and self-governing civitates,
administrative areas based for the most part on the indigenous tribes,
took over local administration. This involved a large program of
urbanization and also of education, which continued into the 2nd
century; Tacitus, in his biography of Agricola, emphasizes the
encouragement given to it. Roman conquest of Wales was complete by 78,
but Agricola’s invasion of Scotland failed because shortage of manpower
prevented him from completing the occupation of the whole island.
Moreover, when the British garrison was reduced (c. ad 90) by a legion
because of continental needs, it became evident that a frontier would
have to be maintained in the north. After several experiments, the
Solway–Tyne isthmus was chosen, and there the emperor Hadrian built his
stone wall (c. 122–130).

Condition of the provinceThere was a marked contrast in attitude toward the Roman occupation
between the lowland Britons and the inhabitants of Wales and the hill
country of the north. The economy of the former was that of settled
agriculture, and they were largely of Belgic stock; they soon accepted
and appreciated the Roman way of life. The economy of the hill dwellers
was pastoral, and the urban civilization of Rome threatened their
freedom of life. Although resistance in Wales was stamped out by the end
of the 1st century ad, Roman influences were nonetheless weak except in
the Vale of Glamorgan. In the Pennines until the beginning of the 3rd
century there were repeated rebellions, the more dangerous because of
the threat of assistance from free Scotland.

Army and frontierAfter the emperor Domitian had reduced the garrison in about the year
90, three legions remained; their permanent bases were established at
York, Chester, and Caerleon. The legions formed the foundation of Roman
military power, but they were supplemented in garrison duty by numerous
smaller auxiliary regiments both of cavalry and infantry, either 1,000
or 500 strong. These latter garrisoned the wall and were stationed in a
network of other forts established for police work in Wales and northern
England. With 15,000 legionaries and about 40,000 auxiliaries, the army
of Britain was very powerful; its presence had economic as well as
political results. Hadrian’s Wall was the most impressive frontier work
in the Roman Empire. Despite a period in the following two reigns when
another frontier was laid out on the Glasgow–Edinburgh line—the Antonine
Wall, built of turf—the wall of Hadrian came to be the permanent
frontier of Roman Britain. The northern tribes only twice succeeded in
passing it, and then at moments when the garrison was fighting
elsewhere. In the late Roman period, when sea raiding became prevalent,
the wall lost its preeminence as a defense for the province, but it was
continuously held until the end of the 4th century. But although they
withdrew to Hadrian’s line not later than the year 180, the Romans never
abandoned interest in southern Scotland. In the 2nd century their
solution was military occupation. In the 3rd, after active campaigning
(208–211) by the emperor Septimius Severus and his sons during which
permanent bases were built on the east coast of Scotland, the solution
adopted by the emperor Caracalla was regulation of relationship by
treaties. These, perhaps supported by subsidies, were enforced by
supervision of the whole Lowlands by patrols based on forts beyond the
wall. During the 4th century more and more reliance was placed on
friendly native states, and patrols were withdrawn.

AdministrationBritain was an imperial province. The governor represented the emperor,
exercising supreme military as well as civil jurisdiction. As commander
of three legions he was a senior general of consular rank. From the late
1st century he was assisted on the legal side by a legatus juridicus.
The finances were in the hands of the provincial procurator, an
independent official of equestrian status whose staff supervised
imperial domains and the revenues of mines in addition to normal
taxation. In the early 3rd century Britain was divided into two
provinces in order to reduce the power of its governor to rebel, as
Albinus had done in 196: Britannia Superior had its capital at London
and a consular governor in control of two legions and a few auxiliaries;
Britannia Inferior, with its capital at York, was under a praetorian
governor with one legion but many more auxiliaries.

Local administration was of varied character. First came the
chartered towns. By the year 98 Lincoln and Gloucester had joined
Camulodunum as coloniae, and by 237 York had become a fourth. Coloniae
of Roman citizens enjoyed autonomy with a constitution based on that of
republican Rome, and Roman citizens had various privileges before the
law. It is likely that Verulamium was chartered as a Latin municipium
(free town); in such a town the annual magistrates were rewarded with
Roman citizenship. The remainder of the provincials ranked as peregrini
(subjects). In military districts control was in the hands of fort
prefects responsible to legionary commanders; but by the late 1st
century local self-government, as already stated, was granted to
civitates peregrinae, whose number tended to increase with time. These
also had republican constitutions, being controlled by elected councils
and annual magistrates and having responsibility for raising taxes and
administering local justice. In the 1st century there were also client
kingdoms whose rulers were allied to Rome; Cogidubnus, Verica’s
successor, who had his capital at Chichester, is the best known. But
Rome regarded these as temporary expedients, and none outlasted the
Flavian Period (69–96).

Roman societyPre-Roman Celtic tribes had been ruled by kings and aristocracies; the
Roman civitates remained in the hands of the rich because of the heavy
expense of office. But since trade and industry now yielded increasing
profits and the old aristocracies no longer derived wealth from war but
only from large estates, it is likely that new men rose to power. Roman
citizenship was now an avenue of social advancement, and it could be
obtained by 25 years’ service in the auxiliary forces as well as (more
rarely) by direct grants. Soldiers and traders from other parts of the
empire significantly enhanced the cosmopolitan character of the
population, as did the large number of legionaries, who were already
citizens and many of whom must have settled locally. The population of
Roman Britain at its peak amounted perhaps to about two million.

EconomyEven before the conquest, according to the Greek geographer Strabo,
Britain exported gold, silver, iron, hides, slaves, and hounds in
addition to grain. A Roman gold mine is known in Wales, but its yield
was not outstanding. Iron was worked in many places but only for local
needs; silver, obtained from lead, was of more significance. But the
basis of the economy was agriculture, and the conquest greatly
stimulated production because of the requirements of the army. According
to Tacitus, grain to feed the troops was levied as a tax;
correspondingly more had to be grown before a profit could be made. The
pastoralists in Wales and the north probably had to supply leather,
which the Roman army needed in quantity for tents, boots, uniforms, and
shields. A military tannery is known at Catterick. A profit could,
nonetheless, be won from the land because of the increasing demand from
the towns. At the same time the development of a system of large estates
(villas) relieved the ancient Celtic farming system of the necessity of
shouldering the whole burden. Small peasant farmers tended to till the
lighter, less-productive, more easily worked soils. Villa estates were
established on heavier, richer soils, sometimes on land recently won by
forest clearance, itself a result of the enormous new demand for
building timber from the army and the new towns and for fuel for
domestic heating and for public baths. The villa owners had access to
the precepts of classical farming manuals and also to the improved
equipment made available by Roman technology. Their growing prosperity
is vouched for by excavation: there are few villas that did not increase
in size and luxury as corridors and wings were added or mosaics and bath
blocks provided. At least by the 3rd century some landowners were
finding great profit in wool; Diocletian’s price edict (ad 301) shows
that at least two British cloth products had won an empire-wide
reputation. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Cotswold district
was one of the centres of this industry.

Trade in imported luxury goods ranging from wine to tableware and
bronze trinkets vastly increased as traders swarmed in behind the army
to exploit new markets. The profits of developing industries went
similarly at first to foreign capitalists. This is clearly seen in the
exploitation of silver-lead ore and even in the pottery industry. The
Mendip lead field was being worked under military control as early as
the year 49, but under Nero (54–68) both there and in Flintshire, and
not much later also in the Derbyshire lead field, freedmen—the
representatives of Roman capital—were at work. By Vespasian’s reign
(69–79) organized companies (societates) of prospectors are attested.
Roman citizens, who must in the context be freedmen, are also found
organizing the pottery industry in the late 1st century. Large profits
were made by continental businessmen in the first two centuries not only
from such sources but also by the import on a vast scale of high-class
pottery from Gaul and the Rhineland and on a lesser scale of glass
vessels, luxury metalware, and Spanish oil and wine. A large market
existed among the military, and the Britons themselves provided a
second. Eventually this adverse trade balance was rectified by the
gradual capture of the market by British products. Much of the
exceptional prosperity of 4th-century Britain must have been due to its
success in retaining available profits at home.

A final important point is the role of the Roman army in the economic
development of the frontier regions. The presence as consumers of large
forces in northern Britain created a revolution in previous patterns of
trade and civilized settlement. Cereal production was encouraged in
regions where it had been rare, and large settlements grew up in which
many of the inhabitants must have been retired soldiers with an interest
in the land as well as in trade and industry.

Towns Belgic Britain had large centres of population but not towns in the
Roman sense of having not merely streets and public buildings but also
the amenities and local autonomy of a city. In Britain these had
therefore to be provided if Roman civilization and normal methods of
provincial administration were to be introduced. Thus a policy of
urbanization existed in which the legions, as the nearest convenient
source of architects and craftsmen, played an organizing role. The
earlier towns consisted of half-timbered buildings; before ad 100 only
public buildings seem to have been of stone. The administrative capitals
had regular street grids, a forum with basilica (public hall), public
baths, and temples; a few had theatres and amphitheatres, too. With few
exceptions they were undefended. In the 3rd century, town walls were
provided, not so much as a precaution in unsettled times but as a means
of keeping operational the earthwork defenses already provided during a
crisis at the end of the 2nd century. These towns grew in size to about
100–130 acres with populations of about 5,000; a few were twice this
size. The majority of towns in Roman Britain seem to have developed out
of traders’ settlements in the vicinity of early garrison-forts: those
that were not selected as administrative centres remained dependent for
their existence on economic factors, serving either as centres of trade
or manufacture or else as markets for the agricultural peasantry. They
varied considerably in size. In the north, where garrisons were
permanently established, quite large trading settlements grew up in
their vicinity, and at least some of these would rank as towns.

Villas Apart from the exceptional establishment at Fishbourne, in West Sussex,
whose Italian style and luxurious fittings show that it was the palace
of King Cogidubnus, the houses of Romano-British villas had simple
beginnings and were of a provincial type. A few owners were prosperous
enough in the 2nd century to afford mosaics; but the great period of
villa prosperity lay in the 4th century, when many villas grew to
impressive size. Their importance was economic and has already been
described. Much remains to be learned from full excavation of their
subsidiary work buildings. Larger questions of tenure and organization
are probably insoluble in the absence of documentary evidence, for it is
dangerous to draw analogies from classical sources since conditions in
Celtic Britain were very different from those of the Mediterranean
world.

Religion and cultureA great variety of religious cults were to be found. In addition to
numerous Celtic deities of local or wider significance, the gods of the
classical pantheon were introduced and were often identified with their
Celtic counterparts. In official circles the worship of the state gods
of Rome and of the imperial cult was duly observed. In addition
merchants and soldiers introduced oriental cults, among them
Christianity. The latter, however, made little headway until the late
4th century, though the frescoes at Lullingstone in Kent and the mosaics
at Hinton St. Mary in Dorset attest its presence among villa owners.
Although classical temples are sometimes found in towns, the normal
temple was of the Romano-Celtic type consisting of a small square shrine
and surrounding portico; temples of this type are found in town and
country alike.

Romanization was strongest in the towns and among the upper classes,
as would be expected; there is evidence that in the countryside Celtic
continued to be spoken, though it was not written. Many people were
bilingual: graffiti prove that even artisans wrote Latin. Evidence of
the classical education of the villa owners is provided by their
mosaics, which prove an acquaintance with classical mythology and even
with the Aeneid of Virgil. Sculpture and wall painting were both
novelties in Roman Britain. Statues or busts in bronze or marble were
imported from Gaulish or Mediterranean workshops, but British sculptors
soon learned their trade and at their best produced attractive works in
a provincial idiom, often for votive purposes. Many cruder works were
also executed whose interest lies in the proof they afford that the
conventions of the classical world had penetrated even to the lower
classes. Mosaic floors, found in towns and villas, were at first, as at
Fishbourne, laid by imported craftsmen. But there is evidence that by
the middle of the 2nd century a local firm was at work at Colchester and
Verulamium, and in the 4th century a number of local mosaic workshops
can be recognized by their styles. One of the most skilled of these was
based in Cirencester.

Roman civilization thus took root in Britain; its growth was more
obvious in urban circles than among the peasants and weakest in the
resistant highland zone. It was a provincial version of Roman culture,
but one with recognizably British traits.

The decline of Roman ruleThe reforms of Diocletian ended the chaos of the 3rd century and ushered
in the late imperial period. Britain, however, for a short time became a
separate empire through the rebellion (286/287) of Carausius. This man
had been in command against the Saxon pirates in the Channel and by his
naval power was able to maintain his independence. His main achievement
was to complete the new system of Saxon Shore forts around the
southeastern coasts. At first he sought recognition as coemperor, but
this was refused. In 293 the fall of Boulogne to Roman forces led to his
murder and the accession of Allectus, who, however, fell in his turn
when Constantius I invaded Britain in 296. Allectus had withdrawn troops
from the north to oppose the landing, and Hadrian’s Wall seems to have
been attacked, for Constantius had to restore the frontier as well as
reform the administration. He divided Britain into four provinces, and
in the same period the civil power was separated from the military. Late
Roman sources show three separate commands respectively under the dux
Britanniarum (commander of the Britains), the comes litoris Saxonici
(count of the Saxon Shore), and the comes Britanniarum, though the dates
of their establishment are unknown and may not have been identical.

The 4th century was a period of great prosperity in towns and
countryside alike. Britain had escaped the “barbarian” invasions of the
3rd century and may have seemed a safe refuge for wealthy continentals.
Its weakness lay in the fact that its defense was ultimately controlled
by distant rather than local rulers. The garrison was perhaps weakened
by withdrawals for the civil war of Magnentius (350–351); at any rate in
367 a military disaster occurred due to concerted seaborne attacks from
the Picts of Scotland and the Scots of Ireland. But, though the frontier
and forts behind it suffered severely, there is little trace of damage
to towns or villas. Count Theodosius in 369 restored order and
strengthened the defenses of the towns with external towers designed to
mount artillery. Prosperity continued, but the withdrawals of troops by
Magnus Maximus in 383 and again at the end of the century by Stilicho
weakened security. Thus, when Constantine III, who was declared emperor
by the army in Britain in 407, took further troops to Gaul, the forces
remaining in the island were insufficient to provide protection against
increasing Pictish and Saxon raids. The Britons appealed to the
legitimate emperor, Honorius, who was unable to send assistance but
authorized the cities to provide for their own defense (410). This marks
the end of Roman Britain, for the central government never reestablished
control, but for a generation there was little other outward change.

Power fell gradually into the hands of tyrants. Chief of these was
Vortigern (c. 425), who, unlike earlier usurpers, made no attempt to
become Roman emperor but was content with power in Britain. Independence
was producing separate interests. By this date Christianity had made
considerable headway in the island, but the leaders followed the
heretical teaching of Pelagius, himself a Briton, who had emphasized the
importance of the human will over divine grace in the achievement of
salvation. It has been held that the self-reliance shown in the
maintenance of national independence was inspired by this philosophy.
Yet there was also a powerful Roman Catholic party anxious to reforge
the links with Rome, in support of whom St. Germanus of Auxerre visited
Britain in 429. It may have been partly to thwart the plans of this
party that Vortigern made the mistake (c. 430; the date given by the
Anglo-Saxon Benedictine scholar Bede [d. 735] is between 446 and 454) of
inviting Saxons to settle and garrison strategic areas of the east
coast, though he certainly also had in mind the need to ward off
seaborne raids by Picts, which at this time were troublesome. Planned
settlement of this sort is the best explanation for the earliest Saxon
settlements found around the mouths of the east-coast estuaries and also
in the central southeast region around Oxford. For a time the system
worked successfully, but, when in 442 these Saxon foederati (allies)
rebelled and called in others of their race to help them, it was found
that they had been given a stranglehold on Britain. A long period of
warfare and chaos was inaugurated, which was economically disastrous. It
was probably this period that saw the disintegration of the majority of
the villa estates; with the breakdown of markets and the escape of
slaves, villas ceased to be viable and must have gradually fallen into
ruin, though the land itself did not cease to be cultivated. A few
villas met a violent end. The towns, under the protection of their
strong defenses, at first provided refuge at any rate for the rich who
could leave their lands; but by degrees decay set in as trade declined
and finally even the supply of food was threatened. In about 446 the
British made a vain appeal for help to the Roman general Aetius (the
“Groans of the Britons” mentioned in the De excidio et conquestu
Britanniae of the British writer Gildas). For several decades they
suffered reverses; many emigrated to Brittany. In the second half of the
5th century Ambrosius Aurelianus and the shadowy figure of Arthur began
to turn the tide by the use of cavalry against the ill-armed Saxon
infantry. A great victory was won at Mons Badonicus (a site not
identifiable) toward 500: now it was Saxons who emigrated, and the
British lived in peace all through the first half of the 6th century, as
Gildas records. But in the second half the situation slowly worsened.

Sheppard Sunderland Frere

Anglo-Saxon England

The invaders and their early settlementsAlthough Germanic foederati, allies of Roman and post-Roman authorities,
had settled in England in the 4th century ad, tribal migrations into
Britain began about the middle of the 5th century. The first arrivals,
according to the 6th-century British writer Gildas, were invited by a
British king to defend his kingdom against the Picts and Scots. A
tradition reached Bede that the first mercenaries were from three
tribes—the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—which he locates on the Cimbric
Peninsula, and by implication the coastlands of northwestern Germany.
Archaeology, however, suggests a more complex picture showing many
tribal elements, Frankish leadership in the first waves, and Frisian
contacts. Revolt by these mercenaries against their British employers in
the southeast of England led to large-scale Germanic settlements near
the coasts and along the river valleys. Their advance was halted for a
generation by native resistance, which tradition associates with the
names of Ambrosius Aurelianus and Arthur, culminating in victory about
500 by the Britons at the Battle of Mons Badonicus at an unidentified
location. But a new Germanic drive began about 550, and before the
century had ended, the Britons had been driven west to the borders of
Dumnonia (Cornwall and Devon) and to the Welsh Marches, while invaders
were advancing west of the Pennines and northward into Lothian.

The fate of the native British population is difficult to determine.
The case against its large-scale survival rests largely on linguistic
evidence, such as the scarcity of Romano-British words continuing into
English and the use of English even by Northumbrian peasants. The case
against wholesale extermination also rests on linguistic evidence, such
as place-names and personal names, as well as on evidence provided by
urban and rural archaeology. Certainly few Britons in England were above
servile condition. By the end of the 7th century people regarded
themselves as belonging to “the nation of the English,” though divided
into several kingdoms. This sense of unity was strengthened during long
periods when all kingdoms south of the Humber acknowledged the
overlordship (called by Bede an imperium) of a single ruler, known as a
bretwalda, a word first recorded in the 9th century.

The first such overlord was Aelle of Sussex, in the late 5th century;
the second was Ceawlin of Wessex, who died in 593. The third overlord,
Aethelberht of Kent, held this power in 597 when the monk Augustine led
a mission from Rome to Kent; Kent was the first English kingdom to be
converted to Christianity. The Christian church provided another
unifying influence, overriding political divisions, although it was not
until 669 that the church in England acknowledged a single head.

The social systemAethelberht set down in writing a code of laws; although it reflects
Christian influence, the system underlying the laws was already old,
brought over from the Continent in its main lines. The strongest social
bond of this system was that of kinship; every freeman depended on his
kindred for protection, and the social classes were distinguished by the
amount of their wergild (the sum that the kindred could accept in place
of vengeance if a man were killed). The normal freeman was the ceorl, an
independent peasant landowner; below him in Kent were persons with lower
wergilds, who were either freedmen or, as were similar persons in
Wessex, members of a subject population; above the ceorls were the
nobles—some perhaps noble by birth but more often men who had risen by
service as companions of the king—with a wergild three times that of a
ceorl in Kent, six times that of a ceorl elsewhere. The tie that bound a
man to his lord was as strong as that of the kindred. Both nobles and
ceorls might possess slaves, who had no wergild and were regarded as
chattels.

Early traditions, embodied in king lists, imply that all Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms except Sussex were established by rulers deemed to have
descended from the gods. No invading chieftain is described by the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as “king”—although the title was soon used—and
chieftainship, as before the conquest, remained central to Germanic
tribal society. The sacral character of kingship later increased and
changed in meaning as the Christian ruler was set apart by coronation
and anointment. In the established English kingdoms the king had special
rights—compensations for offenses committed in his presence or his home
or against anyone under his protection; rights to hospitality, which
later became a food rent charged on all land; and rights to various
services. He rewarded his followers with grants of land, probably at
first for their lifetime only, but the need to provide permanent
endowment for the church brought into being a type of land that was free
from most royal dues and that did not revert to the king. From the
latter part of the 7th century such land was sometimes conferred by
charter. It became common to make similar grants by charter to laymen,
with power to bequeath; but three services—the building of forts and
bridges and service in the army—were almost invariably excepted from the
immunity. The king received fines for various crimes; but a man’s guilt
was established in an assembly of freemen, where the accused tried to
establish his innocence by his oath—supported by oath helpers—and, if
this failed, by ordeal. On matters of importance the king normally
consulted his witan (wise men).

There were local variations in the law, and over a period of time the
law developed to meet changed circumstances. As kingdoms grew larger,
for example, an official called an ealderman was needed to administer
part of the area, and later a sheriff was needed to look after the royal
rights in each shire. The acceptance of Christianity made it necessary
to fit the clergy into the scale of compensations and assign a value to
their oaths and to fix penalties for offenses such as sacrilege, heathen
practices, and breaches of the marriage law. But the basic principles
were little changed.

The Anglo-Saxons left England a land of villages, but the continuity
of village development is uncertain. In the 7th–8th centuries, in what
is called the “Middle Saxon shuffle,” many early villages were
abandoned, and others, from which later medieval villages descended,
were founded. The oldest villages are not, as previously thought, those
with names ending in -ingas but rather those ending in -ham and -ingham.
English trading towns, whose names often end in -wich, from the Latin
vicus (“village”), developed in the Middle Saxon period, and other urban
settlements grew out of and date from the Alfredian and later defenses
against Viking attack.

The conversion to ChristianityPlace-names containing the names of gods or other heathen elements are
plentiful enough to prove the vitality of heathenism and to account for
the slow progress of conversion in some areas. In Kent, the first
kingdom to accept Christianity, King Wihtred’s laws in 695 contained
clauses against heathen worship. The conversion renewed relations with
Rome and the Continent; but the full benefit of this was delayed because
much of England was converted by the Celtic church, which had lost
contact with Rome.

Augustine’s mission in 597 converted Kent; but it had only temporary
success in Essex, which reverted to heathenism in 616. A mission sent
under Bishop Paulinus from Kent to Northumbria in 627 converted King
Edwin and many of his subjects in Northumbria and Lindsey. It received a
setback in 632 when Edwin was killed and Paulinus withdrew to Kent.
About 630 Archbishop Honorius of Canterbury sent a Burgundian, Felix, to
convert East Anglia, and the East Anglian church thenceforth remained
faithful to Canterbury. Soon after, the West Saxons were converted by
Birinus, who came from Rome. Meanwhile, King Oswald began to restore
Christianity in Northumbria, bringing Celtic missionaries from Iona. And
it was the Celtic church that began in 653 to spread the faith among the
Middle Angles, the Mercians, and the peoples of the Severn valley; it
also won back Essex.

At first there was little friction between the Roman and Celtic
missions. Oswald of Northumbria joined with Cynegils of Wessex in giving
Dorchester-on-Thames as seat for Birinus’ bishopric; the Irishmen
Maildubh in Wessex and Fursey in East Anglia worked in areas converted
by the Roman church; and James the Deacon continued Paulinus’ work in
Northumbria. Later, however, differences in usage—especially in the
calculation of the date of Easter—caused controversy, which was settled
in favour of the Roman party at the Synod of Whitby in 664. The
adherents of Celtic usage either conformed or withdrew, and advocates of
Roman practice became active in the north, the Midlands, and Essex.
Theodore of Tarsus (arrived 669), the first Roman archbishop to be
acknowledged all over England, was active in establishing a proper
diocesan system, whereas in the Celtic church bishops tended to move
freely without fixed sees and settled boundaries; he held the first
synod of the English church at Hertford in 672, and this forbade a
bishop to interfere in another’s diocese or any priest to move into
another diocese without his bishop’s permission. Sussex and the Isle of
Wight—the last outposts of heathenism—were converted by Bishop Wilfrid
and his followers from 681 to 687 and thenceforth followed Roman usages.

The Anglo-Saxons attributed their conversion to Pope Gregory I, “the
Apostle of the English,” who had sent Augustine. This may seem less than
fair to the Celtic mission. The Celtic church made a great impression by
its asceticism, fervour, and simplicity, and it had a lasting influence
on scholarship. Yet the period of Celtic dominance was only 30 years.
The decision at Whitby made possible a form of organization better
fitted for permanent needs than the looser system of the Celtic church.

The golden age of BedeWithin a century of Augustine’s landing, England was in the forefront of
scholarship. This high standard arose from a combination of influences:
that from Ireland, which had escaped the decay caused elsewhere by the
barbarian invasions, and that from the Mediterranean, which reached
England mainly through Archbishop Theodore and his companion, the abbot
Adrian. Under Theodore and Adrian, Canterbury became a famous school,
and men trained there took their learning to other parts of England. One
of these men was Aldhelm, who had been a pupil of Maildubh (the Irish
founder of Malmesbury); under Aldhelm, Malmesbury became an influential
centre of learning. Aldhelm’s own works, in Latin verse and prose,
reveal a familiarity with many Latin authors; his writings became
popular among admirers of the ornate and artificial style he had learned
from his Celtic teachers. Before long a liberal education could be had
at such other West Saxon monasteries as Nursling and Wimborne.

The finest centre of scholarship was Northumbria. There Celtic and
classical influences met: missionaries brought books from Ireland, and
many Englishmen went to Ireland to study. Other Northumbrians went
abroad, especially to Rome; among them was Benedict Biscop. Benedict
returned from Rome with Theodore (668–669), spent some time in
Canterbury, and then brought the learning acquired there to Northumbria.
He founded the monasteries at Wearmouth (674) and Jarrow (682), where
Bede spent his life. Benedict and Ceolfrith, abbot of Jarrow, brought
books from the Continent and assembled the fine library that was
available to Bede.

Bede (c. 672–735) is remembered as a great historian whose work never
lost its value; but he was also a theologian regarded throughout the
Middle Ages as second only to the Church Fathers. Nonetheless, even
though he was outstanding, he did not work in isolation. Other
Northumbrian houses—Lindisfarne, Whitby, and Ripon—produced saints’
lives, and Bede was in touch with many learned men, not only in
Northumbria; there are also signs of scholarly activity in London and in
East Anglia.

Moreover, in this period religious poetry was composed in the diction
and technique of the older secular poetry in the vernacular. Beowulf,
considered the greatest Old English poem, is sometimes assigned to this
age, but the dating is uncertain. Art flourished, with a combination of
native elements and influences from Ireland and the Mediterranean. The
Hiberno-Saxon (or Anglo-Irish) style of manuscript illumination was
evolved, its greatest example—the Lindisfarne Gospels—also showing
classical influence. Masons from Gaul and Rome built stone churches. In
Northumbria stone monuments with figure sculpture and vine-scroll
patterns were set up. Churches were equipped with precious objects—some
from abroad, some of native manufacture (even in heathen times the
English had been skilled metalworkers). Manuscripts and works of art
were taken abroad to churches founded by the English missions, and these
churches, in turn, became centres of production. The great Sutton Hoo
ship burial, discovered in 1939 at the burial site of the East Anglian
royal house and perhaps the cenotaph of the bretwalda Raedwald (d. c.
625), is further evidence of influences from abroad, revealing important
Anglo-Saxon contacts with Scandinavia, Byzantium, France, and the
Mediterranean.

The heptarchy

The supremacy of Northumbria and the rise of Mercia When Northumbria became eminent in scholarship, its age of political
importance was over. This political dominance had begun when
Aethelfrith, ruling over the united Northumbrian kingdoms of Bernicia
and Deira, defeated the Dalriadic Scots at Degsastan in 603 and the
Welsh at Chester in 613–616. Aethelfrith was himself defeated and killed
in 616 by Edwin, the exiled heir to Deira, with the help of Raedwald of
East Anglia, then overlord of the southern peoples.

Edwin continued to defeat the Welsh and became the acknowledged
overlord of all England except Kent: he annexed the British kingdom of
Elmet, invaded North Wales, and captured Anglesey and the Isle of Man.
But he fell at Hatfield in 632 before the forces of Cadwallon, king of
Gwynedd, and of Penda, a Mercian chieftain. A year later Aethelfrith’s
son Oswald destroyed Cadwallon and restored the kingdom of Northumbria,
and he became overlord of all the lands south of the River Humber. But
Mercia was becoming a serious rival; originally a small kingdom in the
northwest Midlands, it had absorbed the peoples of the Severn valley,
including the Hwicce, a West Saxon people annexed in 628 after a victory
by Penda at Cirencester.

Penda threw off Northumbrian control when he defeated and killed
Oswald in 641. He drove out Cenwalh of Wessex, who took refuge in East
Anglia from 645 to 648. Penda’s control of Middle Anglia, where he made
his son subking in 653, brought him to the East Anglian frontier; he
invaded this kingdom three times, killing three of its kings. He was
able to draw an army from a wide area, including East Anglia, when he
invaded Northumbria in 654; nevertheless, he was defeated and killed by
Oswiu, Oswald’s successor.

For a short time Oswiu was overlord of southern England, but a
Mercian revolt put Penda’s son Wulfhere on the throne in 657, and he
greatly extended Mercian power to the southeast and south. Wulfhere
became overlord of Essex, with London, and of Surrey. He also held the
West Saxon lands along the middle Thames and blocked any eastward
advance of the West Saxons by capturing the Isle of Wight and the
mainland opposite and giving them to his godson, Aethelwalh of Sussex.
Yet Wulfhere’s reign ended in disaster; the Kentish monk Aedde, in his
Life of St. Wilfrid, said Wulfhere roused all the southern peoples in an
attack on Ecgfrith of Northumbria in 674 but was defeated and died soon
after.

Ecgfrith took possession of Lindsey, a section of modern
Lincolnshire, but he lost it to Aethelred of Mercia after the Battle of
the Trent in 678. Thenceforward Northumbria was no threat to Mercian
dominance because it was occupied in fighting the Picts in the north.
After Ecgfrith was slain by them in 685, his successors took little part
in external affairs.

Yet Mercian power was threatened from the south. Caedwalla had added
Surrey, Sussex, and the Isle of Wight to the West Saxon kingdom and thus
came near to uniting all lands south of the Thames into a single kingdom
that might have held its own against Mercia. But this kingdom was
short-lived. Kent became free from foreign interference in 694, two
years after the accession of Wihtred, who reestablished the Kentish
royal line. Sussex appears again as an independent kingdom; and
Caedwalla’s successor, Ine, was mainly occupied in extending his
territory to the west. After Wihtred’s death in 725 and Ine’s abdication
in 726, both Kent and Wessex had internal troubles and could not resist
the Mercian kings Aethelbald and Offa.

The great age of MerciaAethelbald succeeded in 716 to the rule of all the Midlands and to the
control of Essex and London. By 731 all provinces south of the Humber
were subject to him. Some of his charters use a regnal style suited to
this dignity, such as “king not only of the Mercians but also of all
provinces . . . of the South English” and rex Britanniae (a Latinization
of bretwalda). Aethelbald held this position, with only occasional
warfare, until his death, in 757—far longer than any previous holder of
the imperium. St. Boniface praised the good order he maintained in his
kingdom, though complaining of his immoral life and his encroachment on
church privileges. Aethelbald was murdered by his own household.

Offa did not at once attain the powerful position that later caused
Charles the Great (Charlemagne) to treat with him on equal terms;
Cynewulf of Wessex recovered West Saxon lands by the middle Thames and
did not submit until 779. Offa was overlord in Kent by 764, in Sussex
and the district of Hastings by 771; he apparently lost his authority in
Kent after the Battle of Otford in 776 but recovered it in 785. His use
of an East Anglian mint shows him supreme there. He claimed greater
powers than earlier overlords—subkings among the Hwicce and in Sussex
dropped their royal titles and appeared as ealdermen, and he referred to
a Kentish king as his thegn. The English scholar Alcuin spoke of the
blood shed by Offa to secure the succession of his son, and fugitives
from his kingdom sought asylum with Charles the Great. Charles treated
Offa as if he were sole king of England, at least of the region south of
the Humber; the only other king he acknowledged was the Northumbrian
ruler. Offa seemed not to have claimed authority beyond the Humber but
instead allied himself with King Aethelred of Northumbria by giving him
his daughter in 794.

Offa appears on the continental scene more than had any previous
English king. Charles wrote to him as “his dearest brother” and wished
for a marriage between his own son Charles and Offa’s daughter. Offa’s
refusal, unless Charles let one of his daughters marry Offa’s son
Ecgfrith, led to a three-year quarrel in which Charles closed his ports
to traders from England. This and a letter about regulating trade,
written when the quarrel was over, provide evidence for the importance
of cross-Channel trade, which was one reason for Offa’s reform of the
coinage.

Imitating the action of Pippin III in 755, Offa took responsibility
for the coinage, and thenceforward the king’s name normally appeared on
coins. But the excellent quality in design and workmanship of his coins,
especially those with his portrait, served an additional purpose: they
had a propaganda value in bringing home the preeminence of the Mercian
king not only to his English subjects but also to people on the
Continent. Pope Adrian I regarded Offa with awe and respect.

Because Offa’s laws are lost, little is known of his internal
government, though Alcuin praises it. Offa was able to draw on immense
resources to build a dike to demarcate his frontier against Wales. In
the greatness of its conception and the skill of its construction, the
dike forms a fitting memorial to him. It probably belongs to his later
years, and it secured Mercia from sudden incursions.

The church and scholarship in Offa’s timeNorthumbria was still preeminent in scholarship, and the fame of the
school of York, founded by Bede’s pupil Archbishop Egbert, attracted
students from the Continent and from Ireland. Eventually it supplied
Alcuin to take charge of the revival of learning inaugurated by Charles
the Great; Alcuin’s writings exercised great influence on theological,
biblical, and liturgical studies, and his pupils carried on his work
well into the 9th century.

Learning was not confined to Northumbria; one Latin work was produced
in East Anglia, and recent attribution of manuscripts to Lichfield
suggests that Mercian scholarship has been underestimated. Offa himself
took an interest in education, and men from all areas corresponded with
the missionaries. The Mercian schools that supplied Alfred with scholars
in the 9th century may go back to this period. Vernacular poetry was
composed, perhaps including Beowulf and the poems of Cynewulf.

A steady advance was made in the creation of parishes, and
monasticism flourished and received support from Offa. A great event in
ecclesiastical history was the arrival of a papal legation in 787, the
first since the conversion. It drew up reforming statutes, which were
accepted by the two ecclesiastical provinces, meeting separately under
the presidency of Offa and Aelfwald of Northumbria. Offa used the visit
to secure the consecration of his son—the first recorded coronation
ceremony in England—and also to have Mercia made into a metropolitan
province with its see at Lichfield. The latter seemed desirable partly
because he disliked the Kentish archbishop of Canterbury, Jaenberht, but
also because it would seem fitting to him that the leading kingdom
should be free from external interference in ecclesiastical affairs.
This move was unpopular with the church, and in 802, when relations with
Canterbury had improved, the archbishopric of Lichfield was abolished.

The decline of Mercia and the rise of Wessex
Offa died in 796, and his son died a few weeks later. Cenwulf, their
successor, suppressed revolts in Kent and East Anglia, but he never
attained Offa’s position. Cenwulf allowed Charles to intervene in
Northumbria in 808 and restore Eardwulf (who had been driven from his
kingdom) to the throne—a unique incident in Anglo-Saxon history. Mercian
influence in Wessex was ended when Egbert became king there in 802,
though there is no recorded warfare between the kingdoms for many years,
during which Egbert conquered Cornwall and Cenwulf fought in Wales. But
in 825 Egbert defeated Beornwulf of Mercia and then sent an army into
Kent, with the result that he was accepted as king of Kent, Surrey,
Sussex, and Essex. In that same year the East Angles threw off the
Mercian yoke, killing Beornwulf. In 829 Egbert became ruler of Mercia
and all regions south of the Humber, which caused the chronicler to add
his name to Bede’s list of kings who held the imperium, calling him
bretwalda. The Northumbrians accepted Egbert without fighting. Yet he
held this proud position only one year; then Wiglaf recovered the
Mercian throne and ruled without subjection to Egbert.

By this time Danish Viking raids were a grave menace, and Aethelwulf,
who succeeded his father Egbert in 839, had the wisdom to see that
Mercia and Wessex must combine against the Vikings. Friendly relations
between them were established by marriage alliances and by a peaceful
settlement of boundaries; this paved the way for the acceptance in 886
of Alfred, king of Wessex, as lord of all the English who had not fallen
under Danish rule.

The period of the Scandinavian invasions

Viking invasions and settlementsSmall scattered Viking raids began in the last years of the 8th century;
in the 9th century large-scale plundering incursions were made in
Britain and in the Frankish empire as well. Though Egbert defeated a
large Viking force in 838 that had combined with the Britons of Cornwall
and Aethelwulf won a great victory in 851 over a Viking army that had
stormed Canterbury and London and put the Mercian king to flight, it was
difficult to deal with an enemy that could attack anywhere on a long and
undefended coastline. Destructive raids are recorded for Northumbria,
East Anglia, Kent, and Wessex.

A large Danish army came to East Anglia in the autumn of 865,
apparently intent on conquest. By 871, when it first attacked Wessex, it
had already captured York, been bought off by Mercia, and had taken
possession of East Anglia. Many battles were fought in Wessex, including
one that led to a Danish defeat at Ashdown in 871. Alfred the Great, a
son of Aethelwulf, succeeded to the throne in the course of the year and
made peace; this gave him a respite until 876. Meanwhile the Danes drove
out Burgred of Mercia, putting a puppet king in his place, and one of
their divisions made a permanent settlement in Northumbria.

Alfred was able to force the Danes to leave Wessex in 877, and they
settled northeastern Mercia; but a Viking attack in the winter of 878
came near to conquering Wessex. That it did not succeed is to be
attributed to Alfred’s tenacity. He retired to the Somerset marshes, and
in the spring he secretly assembled an army that routed the Danes at
Edington. Their king, Guthrum, accepted Christianity and took his forces
to East Anglia, where they settled.

The importance of Alfred’s victory cannot be exaggerated. It
prevented the Danes from becoming masters of the whole of England.
Wessex was never again in danger of falling under Danish control, and in
the next century the Danish areas were reconquered from Wessex. Alfred’s
capture of London in 886 and the resultant acceptance of him by all the
English outside the Danish areas was a preliminary to this reconquest.
That Wessex stood when the other kingdoms had fallen must be put down to
Alfred’s courage and wisdom, to his defensive measures in reorganizing
his army, to his building fortresses and ships, and to his diplomacy,
which made the Welsh kings his allies. Renewed attacks by Viking hosts
in 892–896, supported by the Danes resident in England, caused
widespread damage but had no lasting success.

Alfred’s government and his revival of learningGood internal government contributed to Alfred’s successful resistance
to the Danes. He reorganized his finances and the services due from
thegns, issued an important code of laws, and scrutinized carefully the
exercise of justice. Alfred saw the Viking invasions as a punishment
from God, especially because of a neglect of learning, without which men
could not know and follow the will of God. He deplored the decay of
Latin and enjoined its study by those destined for the church, but he
also wished all young freemen of adequate means to learn to read
English, and he aimed at supplying men with “the books most necessary
for all men to know,” in their own language.

Alfred had acquired an education despite great difficulties, and he
translated some books himself with the help of scholars from Mercia, the
Continent, and Wales. Among them they made available works of Bede and
Orosius, Gregory and Augustine, and the De consolatione philosophiae of
Boethius. Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle began in his reign.
The effects of Alfred’s educational reforms can be glimpsed in
succeeding reigns, and his works continued to be copied. Only in his
attempt to revive monasticism did he achieve little, for the monastic
idea had lost its appeal—in England as well as on the Continent—during
the Viking Age.

The achievement of political unity

The reconquest of the Danelaw When Alfred died in 899, his son Edward succeeded him. A large-scale
incursion by the Danes of Northumbria ended in their crushing defeat at
Tettenhall in 910. Edward completed his father’s plan of building a ring
of fortresses around Wessex, and his sister Aethelflaed took similar
measures in Mercia. In 912 Edward was ready to begin the series of
campaigns by which he relentlessly advanced into the Danelaw (Danish
territory in England), securing each advance by a fortress, until he won
back Essex, East Anglia, and the east-Midland Danish areas. Aethelflaed
moved similarly against the Danish territory of the Five Boroughs
(Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, and Stamford). She obtained
Derby and Leicester and gained a promise of submission from the
Northumbrian Danes before she died in 918. Edward had by then reached
Stamford, but he broke off his advance to secure his acceptance by the
Mercians at Tamworth and to prevent their setting up an independent
kingdom. Then he took Nottingham, and all the Danes in Mercia submitted
to him.

Meanwhile another danger had arisen: Norsemen from Ireland had been
settling for some time west of the Pennines, and Northumbria was
threatened by Raegnald, a Norse leader from Dublin, who made himself
king at York in 919. Edward built fortresses at Thelwall and Manchester,
and in 920 he received Raegnald’s submission, along with that of the
Scots, the Strathclyde Welsh, and all the Northumbrians. Yet Norse kings
reigned at York intermittently until 954.

The kingdom of EnglandAthelstan succeeded his father Edward in 924. He made terms with
Raegnald’s successor Sihtric and gave him his sister in marriage. When
Sihtric died in 927, Athelstan took possession of Northumbria, thus
becoming the first king to have direct rule of all England. He received
the submission of the kings of Wales and Scotland and of the English
ruler of Northumbria beyond the Tyne.

Athelstan was proud of his position, calling himself “king of all
Britain” on some of his coins and using in his charters flamboyant
rhetoric carrying the same message; he held great courts attended by
dignitaries from all over England and by Welsh kings; he subjected the
Welsh to tribute and quelled a revolt of the Britons of Cornwall. His
sisters were married to continental princes—Charles the Simple, king of
the Franks; Otto, son of Henry the Fowler; and Hugh, duke of the Franks.
Among those brought up at his court were Louis, Charles’s son; Alan of
Brittany, Athelstan’s godson; and Haakon, son of Harald Fairhair of
Norway; they all returned to win their respective inheritances with his
support. He was a generous donor to continental and English churches.
But Athelstan is remembered chiefly as the victor at Brunanburh, against
a combine of Olaf Guthfrithson, king of Dublin; Owain of Strathclyde;
and Constantine, king of the Scots, whom Athelstan had defeated in 934.
They invaded England in 937, and their defeat is celebrated by a poem in
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Immediately after Athelstan’s death in 939 Olaf seized not only
Northumbria but also the Five Boroughs. By 944 Athelstan’s successor,
his younger brother Edmund, had regained control, and in 945 Edmund
conquered Strathclyde and gave it to Malcolm of Scotland. But Edmund’s
successor, Eadred, lost control of Northumbria for part of his reign to
the Norse kings Erik Bloodax (son of Harald Fairhair) and Olaf
Sihtricson. When Erik was killed in 954, Northumbria became a permanent
part of the kingdom of England.

By becoming rulers of all England, the West Saxon kings had to
administer regions with variant customs, governed under West Saxon,
Mercian, or Danish law. In some parts of the area of Danish occupation,
especially in northern England and the district of the Five Boroughs,
the evidence of place-names, personal names, and dialect seems to
indicate dense Danish settlement, but this has been seriously
questioned; many “Danish” features are also found in Anglo-Saxon areas,
and Danish names do not always prove Danish institutions. Moreover, the
older Anglo-Saxon regions, such as Mercia, which often cut across both
Danish and English areas, were politically more significant. Money,
however, was calculated in marks and ores instead of shillings in Danish
areas, and arable land was divided into plowlands and oxgangs instead of
hides and virgates in the northern and northeastern parts of the
Danelaw. Most important was the presence in some areas of a number of
small landholders with a much greater degree of independence than their
counterparts elsewhere; many ceorls had so suffered under the Danish
ravages that they had bought a lord’s support by sacrificing some of
their independence. Excavations (1976–81) have shown 10th-century Jorvik
(York), a Danish settlement, to have been a centre of international
trade, economic specialization, and town planning; it was on its way to
becoming by 1086 (in the Domesday survey) one of Europe’s largest
cities, numbering at least 2,000 households.

The kings did not try to eradicate the local peculiarities. King
Edgar (reigned 959–975) expressly granted local autonomy to the Danes.
But from Athelstan’s time it was decreed that there was to be one
coinage for all the king’s dominion, and a measure of uniformity in
administrative divisions was gradually achieved. Mercia became divided
into shires on the pattern of those of Wessex. It is uncertain how early
the smaller divisions of the shires were called “hundreds,” but they now
became universal (except in the northern Danelaw, where an area called a
wapentake carried on its fiscal and jurisdictional functions). An
ordinance of the mid-10th century laid down that the court in each
hundred (called “hundred courts”) must meet every four weeks to handle
local legal matters, and Edgar enjoined that the shire courts must meet
twice a year and the borough courts three times. This pattern of local
government survived the Norman Conquest.

The church and the monastic revivalTo those who judged the church solely by the state of its monasteries,
the first half of the 10th century seemed a period of inertia. In fact,
the great tasks of converting the heathen settlers, restoring
ecclesiastical organization in Danish areas, and repairing the damages
of the invasions elsewhere must have absorbed much energy. Even so,
learning and book production were not at so low an ebb as monastic
reformers claimed. Moreover, new monasteries were founded and
benefactions were made to older ones, even though, by post-revival
standards, none of these monasteries was enforcing a strict monastic
rule and several benefactions were held by secular priests. Alfred had
failed to arouse much enthusiasm for monasticism. The movement for
reform began in England about 940 and soon came under the influence of
reforms in Fleury and Lorraine. King Edgar, an enthusiastic supporter,
promoted the three chief reformers to important positions—Dunstan to
Canterbury, Aethelwold to Winchester, and Oswald to Worcester and later
to York. The secular clergy were violently ejected from Winchester and
some other places; Oswald gradually replaced them with monks at
Worcester. All three reformers founded new houses, including the great
monasteries in the Fenlands, where older houses had perished in the
Danish invasion; but Oswald had no success in Northumbria. The
reformers, however, were concerned with more than monasticism—they paid
great attention to other needs of their dioceses; the scholars Abbot
Aelfric and Archbishop Wulfstan, trained by the reformers, directed much
of their writings to improving the education and morals of the parish
clergy and, through them, of the people.

The monastic revival resulted in a great revival of both vernacular
and Latin literature, of manuscript production and illumination, and of
other forms of art. It reached its zenith in the troubled years of King
Ethelred II (reigned 978–1016), after a brief, though violent, reaction
to monasticism following Edgar’s death. In the 11th century monasteries
continued to be productive and new houses were founded; there was also a
movement to impose a communal life on bodies of secular priests and to
found houses of secular canons.

The Anglo-Danish state

The Danish conquest and the reigns of the Danish kingsEthelred succeeded as a child in 978, after the murder of his
stepbrother Edward. He took the throne in an atmosphere of insecurity
and distrust, which partly accounts for the incompetence and treachery
rife in his reign. Viking raids began in 980 and steadily increased in
intensity. They were led by formidable leaders: from 991 to 994 by Olaf
Tryggvason, later king of Norway, and frequently from 994 by Sweyn, king
of Denmark. Ethelred’s massacre of the Danes in England on St. Brice’s
Day, 1002, called for vengeance by Sweyn and, from 1009 to 1012, by a
famous Viking, Thorkell the Tall. In 1013 the English, worn out by
continuous warfare and heavy tributes to buy off the invaders, accepted
Sweyn as king. Ethelred, his wife Emma, and his younger sons sought
asylum with Richard, duke of Normandy, brother of Emma. Ethelred was
recalled to England after Sweyn’s death in 1014; but Sweyn’s son Canute
(Cnut) renewed the invasions and, in spite of valiant resistance by
Ethelred’s son and successor, Edmund, obtained half of England after a
victory at Ashingdon in October 1016 and the rest after Edmund’s death
that November.

Canute rewarded some of his followers with English lands and
ruthlessly got rid of some prominent Englishmen, among them Edmund’s
brother Edwy. (Edmund’s infant sons, however, were carried away to
safety in Hungary.) Yet Canute’s rule was not tyrannical, and his reign
was remembered as a time of good order. The Danish element in his
entourage diminished; and the Englishmen Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and
Godwine, Earl of Wessex, became the most powerful magnates. Canute
married Ethelred’s widow, Emma, thus removing the danger of Norman
support for her sons by Ethelred. Canute fought a successful campaign in
Scotland in 1031, and Englishmen were drawn into his wars in
Scandinavia, which made him lord of Norway. But at home there was peace.
Probably under the influence of Archbishop Wulfstan he became a stout
supporter of the church, which in his reign had the vitality to engage
in missionary work in Scandinavia. Religious as well as political
motives may have caused his pilgrimage to Rome in 1027 to attend the
coronation of the emperor Conrad; from the pope, the emperor, and the
princes whom he met he obtained concessions for English pilgrims and
traders going to Rome. Canute’s laws, drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan,
are mainly based on those of earlier kings, especially Edgar.

Already in 1018 the English and Danes had come to an agreement
“according to Edgar’s law.” No important changes were made in the
machinery of government except that small earldoms were combined to make
great earldoms, a change that placed much power in the hands of their
holders. No attempt was made to restore the English line when Canute
died in 1035; he was followed by his sons Harold and Hardecanute, whose
reigns were unpopular. Denmark passed to Sweyn, son of Canute’s sister
Estrith, in 1043. Meanwhile the Norwegians in 1035 had driven out
another Sweyn, the son whom Canute had set to rule over them with his
mother, Aelfgifu, and had elected Magnus.

The close links with Scandinavia had benefited English trade, but
they left one awkward heritage: Hardecanute and Magnus made an agreement
that if either died without a son, the survivor was to succeed to both
kingdoms. Hardecanute died without a son in 1042, but he was succeeded
by Ethelred’s son Edward, who was known as the Confessor or the Saint
because of his reputation for chastity. Magnus was prevented by trouble
with Denmark from invading England as he intended in 1046; but Harold
Hardraada inherited Magnus’ claim to the English throne, and he came to
enforce it in 1066.

The reign of Edward the Confessor and the Norman Conquest It is easy to regard the years of Edward’s rule simply as a prelude to
the catastrophe of 1066, yet there are other aspects of his reign.
Harrying caused by political disturbances or by incursions of the Scots
or Welsh was only occasional and localized; friendly relations were
usually maintained with Malcolm of Scotland, whom Earl Siward of
Northumbria had supported against Macbeth in 1054; and in 1063 the
victories of Harold, Earl of Wessex, and his brother Tostig ended the
trouble from Wales. The normal course of administration was maintained,
with efficient mints, writing office, taxation system, and courts of
justice. Trade was prosperous. The church contained several good and
competent leaders, and bad appointments—like those of the Normans, Ulf
to Dorchester and Robert to London and Canterbury, and of Stigand to
Winchester—were the exception. Scholarship was not in decline, and
manuscripts were produced in great number. English illumination and
other forms of art were admired abroad.

The troubles of the reign came from the excessive power concentrated
in the hands of the rival houses of Leofric of Mercia and Godwine of
Wessex and from resentment caused by the king’s introduction of Norman
friends, though their influence has sometimes been exaggerated. A crisis
arose in 1051 when Godwine defied the king’s order to punish the men of
Dover, who had resisted an attempt by Eustace of Boulogne to quarter his
men on them by force. The support of Earl Leofric and Earl Siward
enabled Edward to secure the outlawry of Godwine and his sons; and
William of Normandy paid Edward a visit during which Edward may have
promised William succession to the English throne, although this Norman
claim may have been mere propaganda. Godwine and his sons came back the
following year with a strong force, and the magnates were not prepared
to engage them in civil war but forced the king to make terms. Some
unpopular Normans were driven out, including Archbishop Robert, whose
archbishopric was given to Stigand; this act supplied one excuse for the
papal support of William’s cause.

Harold succeeded his father Godwine as earl of Wessex in 1053; Tostig
was made earl of Northumbria in 1055; and their younger brothers were
also provided with earldoms. To settle the question of succession,
negotiations were begun in 1054 to bring Edward, Edmund’s son (nephew of
Edward the Confessor), from Hungary; but Edward died in 1057, leaving a
son, Edgar Aetheling, then a child, who was passed over in 1066. In
about 1064 Harold of Wessex, when visiting Normandy, swore to support
William’s claim. Only Norman versions of the incident survive and the
true circumstances cannot be ascertained, but William used Harold’s
broken oath to help secure papal support later. In 1065 Harold
acquiesced in the appointment of Morcar, brother of Edwin, Earl of
Mercia, to replace Tostig when the Northumbrians revolted against him,
and thus Harold turned his brother into an enemy. King Edward, when
dying, named Harold to succeed him, and, after overcoming Northumbrian
reluctance with the help of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, Harold was
universally accepted.

Harold might have proved an effective ruler, but the forces against
him were too strong. The papacy, without hearing the defense in favour
of Harold’s succession, gave its blessing to an invasion of a people who
had always been distinguished for their loyalty to Rome, and this papal
support helped William to collect his army widely. The threat from
Harold III Hardraade, who was joined by Tostig, prevented Harold from
concentrating his forces in the south and took him north at a critical
moment. He fought at Hastings only 24 days after the armies of Mercia
and Northumbria had been put out of action by enormous losses at Fulford
and only 19 days after he had defeated and killed Harold III Hardraade
and Tostig at Stamford Bridge. Harold was slain at Hastings, and on
Christmas Day, 1066, William of Normandy was crowned king of England.
Although the Anglo-Saxon fighting force was perhaps the best in Europe
and the defeat at Hastings due largely to a series of historical
accidents, it is not difficult to understand the English chronicler’s
view that God was angry with the English people.

Dorothy Whitelock
William A. Chaney

The Normans (1066–1154)

William I (1066–87)The Norman Conquest has long been argued about. The question has been
whether William I introduced fundamental changes in England or based his
rule solidly on Anglo-Saxon foundations. A particularly controversial
issue has been the introduction of feudalism. On balance, the debate has
favoured dramatic change while also granting that in some respects the
Normans learned much from the English past. Yet William replaced his
initial policy of trying to govern through Englishmen with an
increasingly thoroughgoing Normanization.

Resistance and rebellionThe Conquest was not achieved at a single stroke. In 1068 Exeter rose
against the Normans, and a major rising began in the north. A savage
campaign in 1069–70, the so-called harrying of the north, emphasized
William’s military supremacy and his brutality. A further English rising
in the Fens achieved nothing. In 1075 William put down rebellion by the
earls of Hereford, Norfolk, and Northumbria. The latter, the last
surviving English earl, was executed for treason.

The introduction of feudalism The Conquest resulted in the subordination of England to a Norman
aristocracy. William probably distributed estates to his followers on a
piecemeal basis as lands came into his hands. He granted lands directly
to fewer than 180 men, making them his tenants in chief. Their estates
were often well distributed, consisting of manors scattered through a
number of shires. In vulnerable regions, however, compact blocks of land
were formed, clustered around castles. The tenants in chief owed homage
and fealty to the king and held their land in return for military
service. They were under obligation to supply a certain number of
knights for the royal feudal host—a number that was not necessarily
related to the quantity or quality of land held. Early in the reign many
tenants in chief provided knights from their own households to meet
demands for service, but they soon began to grant some of their own
lands to knights who would serve them just as they in turn served the
king. They could not, however, use their knights for private warfare,
which, in contrast to Normandy, was forbidden in England. In addition to
drawing on the forces provided by feudal means, William made extensive
use of mercenary troops to secure the military strength he needed.
Castles, which were virtually unknown in pre-Conquest England and could
only be built with royal permission, provided bases for administration
and military organization. They were an essential element in the Norman
settlement of England.

Government and justiceWilliam hoped to be able to rule England in much the same way as his
Anglo-Saxon predecessors had done, though in many respects the old
institutions and practices had to be changed in response to the problems
of ruling a conquered land. The Anglo-Saxon witan, or council, became
the king’s curia regis, a meeting of the royal tenants in chief, both
lay and ecclesiastical. William was said by chroniclers to have held
full courts three times a year, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide,
to which all the great men of the realm were summoned and at which he
wore his crown. These were similar to the great courts he held in
Normandy. Inevitably there were many disputes over land, and the curia
regis was where justice was done to the great tenants in chief. William
himself is said to have sat one Sunday “from morn till eve” to hear a
plea between William de Braose and the abbot of Fécamp.

William at first did little to change Anglo-Saxon administrative
organization. The royal household was at the centre of royal government,
and the system, such as it was, under Edward the Confessor had probably
been quite similar to that which existed in Normandy at the same period,
although the actual titles of the officers were not the same. Initially
under William there also was little change in personnel. But, by the end
of his reign, all important administrative officials were Norman, and
their titles corresponded to those in use in Normandy. There were a
steward, a butler, a chamberlain, a constable, a marshal, and a head of
the royal scriptorium, or chancellor. This scriptorium was the source
from which all writs (i.e., written royal commands) were issued. At the
start of William’s reign the writs were in English, and by the end of
it, in Latin.

In local government the Anglo-Saxon shire and hundred courts
continued to function as units of administration and justice, but with
important changes. Bishops and earls ceased to preside over the shire
courts. Bishops now had their own ecclesiastical courts, while earls had
their feudal courts. But although earls no longer presided over shire
courts, they were entitled to take a third of the proceeds coming from
them. The old Anglo-Saxon office of sheriff was transformed into a
position resembling that of the Norman vicomte, as native sheriffs were
replaced by Norman nobles. They controlled the shire and hundred courts,
were responsible for collecting royal revenue, and controlled the royal
castles that had been built both to subdue and protect the country.

William made the most of the financial system he had inherited. In
addition to customary dues, such as revenues from justice and income
from royal lands, his predecessors had been able to levy a geld, or tax,
assessed on the value of land and originally intended to provide funds
to buy off Danish invaders. The Confessor had abandoned this tax, but
the Conqueror collected it at least four times. Profits from the ample
royal estates must have been significant, along with those from royal
mints and towns.

The Conqueror greatly strengthened the administration of justice in
his new land. He occasionally appointed justiciars to preside over local
cases and at times named commissioners to act as his deputies in the
localities. There were a number of great trials during the reign. The
most famous of them was the trial at Pinnenden Heath of a case between
Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, and the king’s half brother, Odo,
bishop of Bayeux and earl of Kent. Not only all the Normans of the shire
but also many Englishmen, especially those learned in the customary law,
attended. On occasion jurors were summoned to give a collective verdict
under oath. Historians have debated as to whether juries were introduced
as a result of the Viking conquests or were a Norman innovation, derived
from Carolingian practice in France. Whichever argument is correct, it
is evident that, under the Normans, juries came into more frequent use.
William introduced one measure to protect his followers: he made the
local community of the hundred responsible for the murder of any Norman.

Church–state relations The upper ranks of the clergy were Normanized and feudalized, following
the pattern of lay society. Bishops received their lands and the symbols
of their spiritual office from the king. They owed knight service and
were under firm royal control. Sees were reorganized, and most came to
be held by continental clergy. In 1070 Lanfranc replaced Stigand as
archbishop of Canterbury. An ecclesiastical lawyer, teacher, and church
statesman, Lanfranc, a native of Italy, had been a monk at Bec and an
abbot of Saint Stephen’s at Caen. Lanfranc and William understood each
other and worked together to introduce discipline and order into the
English church. The see of York was subordinated to Canterbury, and
efforts were made to bring the ecclesiastical affairs of Ireland and
Scotland under Lanfranc’s control. Several church councils were held in
England to legislate for the English church, as similar councils did in
Normandy. William denied that he owed homage or fealty to the pope for
his English lands, although he acknowledged papal support in winning the
new realm. William and Lanfranc resisted Pope Gregory VII’s claim to
papal supremacy: the king decreed that without his consent no pope was
to be recognized in England, no papal letter was to be received, no
church council was to legislate, and no baron or royal official was to
be excommunicated. During William’s reign the controversy over the right
of lay rulers to invest ecclesiastics with the symbols of their office
did not affect England, in contrast to other parts of Latin Christendom.

William’s accomplishmentsAt Christmas 1085 William had “deep speech” with his council and as a
result ordered a general survey of the land to be made. Historians have
debated the purpose of this “Domesday” survey, some seeing it as
primarily a tax assessment, others emphasizing its importance as a basis
for assignment of feudal rights and duties. Its form owed much to
Anglo-Saxon precedent, but within each county section it was organized
on a feudal basis. It was probably a multipurpose document with the main
emphasis on resources for taxation. It was incomplete, for the far north
of England, London, and Winchester were not included, while the returns
for Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk were not condensed into the same form as
was used for the rest of the country. Domesday is a unique record and
offers rich materials for research.

One policy that caused deep resentment under William I, and even
hatred under his successor William II, was the taking over of vast
tracts of land for the king’s forest. In some areas whole villages were
destroyed and the people driven out; elsewhere, people living in forest
areas, though not necessarily removed, were subjected to a severe system
of law with drastic penalties for poaching.

William the Conqueror is presented in contemporary chronicles as a
ruthless tyrant who rigorously put down rebellion and devastated vast
areas, especially in his pacification of the north in 1069–70. He was,
however, an able administrator. Perhaps one of his greatest
contributions to England’s future was the linking up of England with
continental affairs. If the country had been conquered again by the
Danes, as seemed possible, it might have remained in a backwater of
European development. In the event, England was linked, economically and
culturally, to France and continental Europe. The aristocracy spoke
French, while Latin was the language of the church and the
administration.

The sons of William I

William II Rufus (1087–1100)Under William I’s two sons William II Rufus and Henry I, strong,
centralized government continued, and England’s link with Normandy was
strengthened. Rebellion by Norman barons, led by the king’s half uncles,
Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Mortain, was soon put down by William II,
who made promises of good government and relief from taxation and the
severity of the forest laws. Odo of Bayeux was banished, and William of
St. Calais, bishop of Durham, tried for treason. As an ecclesiastic he
rejected the jurisdiction of the king’s court. But Lanfranc pointed out
that it was not as a churchman but as lord of his temporal fiefs that he
was being tried. He was finally allowed to leave the country, in return
for surrender of his fiefs.

William II’s main preoccupation was to win Normandy from his elder
brother Robert. After some initial skirmishing, William’s plans were
furthered by Robert’s decision to go on crusade in 1096. Robert
mortgaged his lands to William for 10,000 marks, which was raised in
England by drastic and unpopular means. In his last years William
campaigned successfully in Maine and the French Vexin so as to extend
the borders of Normandy. His death was the result of an “accident”
possibly engineered by his younger brother Henry: he was shot with an
arrow in the New Forest. Henry, who was conveniently with the hunting
party, rode posthaste to Winchester, seized the treasury, and was chosen
king the next day.

Henry I (1100–35)A good politician and administrator, Henry I was the ablest of the
Conqueror’s sons. At his coronation on Aug. 5, 1100, he issued a charter
intended to win the support of the nation. This propaganda document, in
which Henry promised to give up many practices of the past, demonstrates
how oppressive Norman government had become. Henry promised not to
exploit church vacancies, as his brother had done, and guaranteed that
reliefs, sums paid by feudal vassals when they took over their fathers’
estates, would be “just and legitimate.” He also promised to return to
the laws of Edward the Confessor, though this cannot have been intended
literally.

Following the suppression of rebellion in England, the conquest of
Normandy was an important priority for Henry. By 1105 he took the
offensive, and in September 1106 he won a decisive battle at Tinchebray
that gave him control of the whole of Normandy. Robert was captured and
was to spend the rest of his 80 years in castle dungeons. His son,
William Clito, escaped and remained until his death in 1128 a thorn in
Henry’s flesh. Success in Normandy was followed by wars against Louis VI
of France, but by 1120 Henry was everywhere successful in both diplomacy
and war. He had arranged a marriage for his only legitimate son,
William, to Matilda, daughter of Fulk of Anjou, and had received Fulk’s
homage for Maine. Pope Calixtus II, his cousin, gave him full support
for his control of Normandy on condition that his son William should do
homage to the French king.

Relations with the church had not always been easy. Henry had
inherited from William II a quarrel with the church that became part of
the Europe-wide Investiture Controversy. After Lanfranc’s death William
had delayed appointing a successor, presumably for the privilege of
exploiting the resources of the archbishopric. After four years, during
a bout of illness, he appointed Anselm of Bec, one of the great scholars
of his time (1093). Anselm did homage for his temporalities, but whether
or not he was ever invested with the symbols of spiritual office by the
king is not clear. Papal confirmation was complicated by the fact that
there were two claimants to the papal throne. Anselm refused to accept a
decision made by the king’s supporters and insisted on receiving his
pallium from Urban II, a reform pope in the tradition of Gregory VII,
rather than from the imperial nominee, Clement III. Conflict between
king and archbishop flared up again in 1097 over what William considered
to be an inadequate Canterbury contingent for his Welsh war. The upshot
was that Anselm went into exile until William’s death. At Rome he heard
new papal decrees against lay investiture.

Anselm supported Henry’s bid for the throne and returned from exile
in 1100. Almost immediately he quarreled with Henry when the king asked
him to do homage and to receive his archbishopric from his hands. After
various ineffective appeals to Rome, Anselm again went into exile. A
compromise was finally arranged in 1107, when it was agreed that the
king would surrender investiture with the symbols of spiritual office in
return for an agreement that he should supervise the election of the
archbishop and take homage for the temporalities before investiture with
the spiritual symbols took place. It was said that the concession cost
the king “a little, perhaps, of his royal dignity, but nothing of his
power to enthrone anyone he pleased.”

Henry continued and extended the administrative work of his father.
His frequent absences from England prompted the development of a system
that could operate effectively in his absence, under the guidance of
such men as Roger, bishop of Salisbury. The exchequer was developed as a
department of government dealing with royal revenues, and the first
record of the sheriffs’ regular accounting at the exchequer, or Pipe
Roll, to survive is that of 1129–30. Justices with wide-ranging
commissions were sent out into the shires to reinforce local
administration and to inquire into crown pleas, royal revenues, and
other matters of interest and profit for the king. Henry’s government
was highly efficient, but it was also harsh and demanding.

During the last 15 years of his reign the succession was a major
issue. William, Henry’s only legitimate son, was drowned in 1120,
leaving Henry’s daughter Matilda, wife of the German emperor Henry V, as
heir. When Henry V died in 1125, Matilda returned to England. Henry I
persuaded his barons to swear an oath in her support but did not consult
them over her second marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou, who at 14 was 11
years her junior. Within a year Geoffrey repudiated Matilda, but during
a temporary reconciliation, Matilda and Geoffrey had three children.

Henry was a skilled politician, adept at using the levers of
patronage. Men such as Geoffrey de Clinton, the royal chamberlain, owed
much to the favours they received from the king, and they served him
well in return. There was tension between the established nobility and
the “new men” raised to high office by the king, but Henry maintained
control with great effect and distributed favours evenhandedly. In
England his rule, particularly when seen in retrospect, was
characterized by peace, order, and justice. He died, probably of a heart
attack, on Dec. 1, 1135.

The period of anarchy (1135–54)

Matilda and Stephen Henry I’s death precipitated a 20-year crisis whose immediate cause was
a succession dispute. But there has been much debate among historians as
to whether the problems of these years were the result of some deeper
malaise.

No one was enthusiastic about accepting Matilda as queen, especially
as her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, was actually at war with Henry at the
time of his death. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, one of Henry’s many
illegitimate sons, was an impressive candidate for the throne, as were
Henry’s nephews, Theobald and Stephen of Blois. The outcome of the
struggle in 1135 was unexpected: while Theobald, the elder brother, was
receiving the homage of continental vassals for Normandy, Stephen took
ship for England and claimed the throne. Having secured the treasury at
Winchester, he was crowned on December 22.

Stephen had been quick and resolute in securing the crown. But after
the first flush of victory he made concessions that, instead of winning
him support, served to expose his weakness. One such concession was to
King David of Scotland, who was also the Earl of Huntingdon in England.
When David learned of Stephen’s succession, he crossed the border by
force. He was effectively bought off by Stephen’s agreeing that David’s
son Henry should receive Carlisle, Doncaster, and the honour of
Huntingdon. Stephen obtained the support of Robert of Gloucester by a
lavish charter. He also granted a charter to the church forbidding
simony and confirmed the rights of church courts to all jurisdiction
over clerics. Stephen’s lavish appointment of new earls (19 in the
course of the reign) was intended in part as a way of undermining the
power of the sheriffs and constituted a shift of power away from the
centre. Expenditure in Stephen’s early years was heavy and achievements
few.

Stephen soon alienated the church. Much power in central government
had been concentrated in the hands of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, and
his family. One of Roger’s nephews was bishop of Ely, and another was
bishop of Lincoln. This was resented by the Beaumont family, headed by
the Earl of Leicester, and their allies, who formed a powerful court
faction. They planned the downfall of the bishops, and, when a council
meeting was held at Oxford in June 1139, they seized on the opportunity
provided by a brawl in which some of Roger’s men were involved. Rumours
of treason were spread, and Stephen demanded that the bishops should
make satisfaction. When they did not do so, he ordered their arrest.
Thenceforth Stephen was in disfavour with the clergy; he had already
forfeited the support of his brother Henry of Blois, bishop of
Winchester, by failing to make him archbishop of Canterbury in 1137. As
papal legate, Henry was to be the most influential member of the clergy
in the realm.

Civil warMatilda did not land in England until 1139. She and her half brother
Robert of Gloucester established themselves in the southwest; Stephen’s
main strength lay in the east. In 1141 Stephen was defeated and taken
prisoner at the battle of Lincoln, but Matilda alienated the Londoners
and lost support. When Stephen was exchanged for Robert of Gloucester,
who was captured at Winchester, Matilda’s fortunes waned. The Angevin
cause, however, prospered in Normandy. Although Matilda’s son, Henry,
mounted an unsuccessful invasion from Normandy in 1147, in 1153 he
carried out a vigorous and effective campaign. Stephen, saddened by the
death of his elder son Eustace, agreed to a compromise peace. He was to
remain king, but he recognized Henry as his heir.

One chronicler said, “In this king’s time there was nothing but
disturbance and wickedness and robbery.” Though this was an
exaggeration, it is clear that disorder was widespread, with a great
many adulterine castles built (that is, unlicensed castles). It was
possible for the earls of Chester and Leicester to make a treaty without
any reference to royal authority. Stephen’s government lost control of
much of England, and power was fragmented and decentralized.

There has been much debate as to why men fought in the civil war. It
was much more than a simple succession dispute and can be seen as a
natural reaction both to the strong, centralized government of Henry I
and to the weak rule of Stephen. The aim of many magnates was to recover
lands and offices to which they considered they had hereditary rights:
much land had changed hands under Henry I. Men such as Ranulf de
Gernons, 4th Earl of Chester, and Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of
Essex, changed sides frequently, obtaining fresh grants each time. Essex
wanted to recover the lands and positions his grandfather had held. Most
men, however, probably did not want to demolish royal government but
rather wished to control and profit from it. The institutions of
government did not disappear altogether. The period of the “anarchy”
strengthened feudal principles of succession to land, but such offices
as those of sheriff and castellan did not become hereditary.

England in the Norman periodDespite, or perhaps in part because of, the political strains of this
period, these were constructive years. The economy, for which Domesday
Book is a magnificent source, was essentially agrarian, the main unit
being the manor, where the lord’s land (or demesne) was worked by unfree
peasants who held their land in return for performing labour services.
Towns, notably London, flourished, and many received new privileges
based on continental practice. The church benefited from closer
connections with the Continent in many ways. One such benefit was the
arrival of new religious orders: the first Cluniac house was established
at Lewes in 1077, and the Cistercians came to England in 1129. A great
many Augustinian houses were founded in the first part of the 12th
century. Imposing buildings such as Durham Cathedral and the Tower of
London give eloquent testimony to the architectural achievement of the
Normans, while the illuminated Winchester Bible and Psalter, made for
Henry of Blois, bear witness to the artistic excellence of the age.

The early Plantagenets

Henry II (1154–89)Matilda’s son Henry Plantagenet, the first and greatest of three Angevin
kings of England, succeeded Stephen in 1154. Aged 21, he already
possessed a reputation for restless energy and decisive action. He was
to inherit vast lands. As heir to his mother and to Stephen he held
England and Normandy; as heir to his father he held Anjou (hence
Angevin), Maine, and Touraine; as heir to his brother Geoffrey he
obtained Brittany; as husband of Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII
of France, he held Aquitaine, the major part of southwestern France.
Altogether his holdings in France were far larger than those of the
French king. They have become known as the Angevin empire, although
Henry never in fact claimed any imperial rights or used the title of
emperor. From the beginning Henry showed himself determined to assert
and maintain his rights in all his lands. In England this meant
reasserting the centralized power of his grandfather, Henry I. His
success in these aims is the measure of his greatness.

Government of EnglandIn the first decade of his reign Henry was largely concerned with
continental affairs, though he made sure that the adulterine castles in
England were destroyed. Many of the earldoms created in the anarchy of
Stephen’s reign were allowed to lapse. Major change in England began in
the mid-1160s. The Assize of Clarendon of 1166, and that of Northampton
10 years later, promoted public order. Juries were used to provide
evidence of what crimes had been committed and to bring accusations. New
forms of legal action were introduced, notably the so-called possessory
assizes, which determined who had the right to immediate possession of
land, not who had the best fundamental right. That could be decided by
the grand assize, by means of which a jury of 12 knights would decide
the case. The use of standardized forms of writ greatly simplified
judicial administration. “Returnable” writs, which had to be sent back
by the sheriffs to the central administration, enabled the crown to
check that its instructions were obeyed. An increasing number of cases
came before royal courts rather than private feudal courts. Henry I’s
practice of sending out itinerant justices was extended and
systematized. In 1170 a major inquiry into local administration, the
Inquest of Sheriffs, was held, and many sheriffs were dismissed.

There were important changes to the military system. In 1166 the
tenants in chief were commanded to disclose the number of knights
enfeoffed on their lands so that Henry could take proper financial
advantage of changes that had taken place since his grandfather’s day.
Scutage (money payment in lieu of military service) was an important
source of funds, and Henry preferred scutage to service because
mercenaries were more efficient than feudal contingents. In the Assize
of Arms of 1181 Henry determined the arms and equipment appropriate to
every free man, based on his income from land. This measure, which could
be seen as a revival of the principles of the Anglo-Saxon fyrd, was
intended to provide for a local militia, which could be used against
invasion, rebellion, or for peacekeeping.

Struggle with Thomas Becket Henry attempted to restore the close relationship between church and
state that had existed under the Norman kings. His first move was the
appointment in 1162 of Thomas Becket as archbishop of Canterbury. Henry
assumed that Becket, who had served efficiently as chancellor since 1155
and been a close companion to him, would continue to do so as
archbishop. Becket, however, disappointed him. Once appointed
archbishop, he became a militant defender of the church against royal
encroachment and a champion of the papal ideology of ecclesiastical
supremacy over the lay world. The struggle between Henry and Becket
reached a crisis at the Council of Clarendon in 1164. In the
Constitutions of Clarendon Henry tried to set down in writing the
ancient customs of the land. The most controversial issue proved to be
that of jurisdiction over “criminous clerks” (clerics who had committed
crimes); the king demanded that such men should, after trial in church
courts, be sent for punishment in royal courts.

Becket initially accepted the Constitutions but would not set his
seal to them. Shortly thereafter, however, he suspended himself from
office for the sin of yielding to the royal will in the matter. Although
he failed to obtain full papal support at this stage, Alexander III
ultimately came to his aid over the Constitutions. Later in 1164 Becket
was charged with peculation of royal funds when chancellor. After Becket
had taken flight for France, the king confiscated the revenues of his
province, exiled his friends, and confiscated their revenues. In 1170
Henry had his eldest son crowned king by the archbishop of York, not
Canterbury, as was traditional. Becket, in exile, appealed to Rome and
excommunicated the clergy who had taken part in the ceremony. A
reconciliation between Becket and Henry at the end of the same year
settled none of the points at issue. When Becket returned to England, he
took further measures against the clergy who had taken part in the
coronation. In Normandy the enraged king, hearing the news, burst out
with the fateful words that incited four of his knights to take ship for
England and murder the archbishop in Canterbury Cathedral.

Almost overnight the martyred Thomas became a saint in the eyes of
the people. Henry repudiated responsibility for the murder and
reconciled himself with the church. But despite various royal promises
to abolish customs injurious to the church, royal control of the church
was little affected. Henceforth criminous clerks were to be tried in
church courts, save for offenses against the forest laws. Disputes over
ecclesiastical patronage and church lands that were held on the same
terms as lay estates were, however, to come under royal jurisdiction.
Finally Henry did penance at Canterbury, allowing the monks to scourge
him. But with Becket out of the way, it proved possible to negotiate
most of the points at issue between church and state. The martyred
archbishop, however, was to prove a potent example for future prelates.

Rebellion of Henry’s sons and Eleanor of Aquitaine Henry’s sons, urged on by their mother and by a coalition of his
enemies, raised a rebellion throughout his domains in 1173. King William
I the Lion of Scotland joined the rebel coalition and invaded the north
of England. Lack of cooperation among the rebels, however, enabled Henry
to defeat them one at a time with a mercenary army. The Scottish king
was taken prisoner at Alnwick. Queen Eleanor was retired to polite
imprisonment for the rest of Henry’s life. The king’s sons and the
baronial rebels were treated with leniency, but many baronial castles
were destroyed following the rising. A brief period of amity between
Henry and Louis of France followed, and the years between 1175 and 1182
marked the zenith of Henry’s prestige and power. In 1183 the younger
Henry again tried to organize opposition to his father, but he died in
June of that year. Henry spent the last years of his life locked in
combat with the new French king, Philip II Augustus, with whom his son
Richard had entered into an alliance. Even his youngest son, John,
deserted him at the end.

Richard I (1189–99)Henry II died in 1189, an embittered old man. He was succeeded by his
son Richard I, nicknamed the Lion-Heart. Richard, a renowned and
skillful warrior, was mainly interested in the Crusade to recover
Jerusalem and in the struggle to maintain his French holdings against
Philip Augustus. He spent only about six months of his 10-year reign in
England. During his frequent absences he left a committee in charge of
the realm. The chancellor, William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, dominated
the early part of the reign until forced into exile by baronial
rebellion in 1191. Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen, succeeded
Longchamp, but the most important and able of Richard’s ministers was
Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury, justiciar from 1193 to 1198,
and chancellor from 1199 to 1205. With the king’s mother, Eleanor, he
put down a revolt by Richard’s brother John in 1193 with strong and
effective measures. But when Richard returned from abroad, he forgave
John and promised him the succession.

This reign saw some important innovations in taxation and military
organization. Warfare was expensive, and in addition Richard was
captured on his return from the Crusade by Leopold V of Austria and held
for a high ransom of 150,000 marks. Various methods of raising money
were tried: an aid, or scutage; a carucage, or tax on plow lands; a
general tax of a fourth of revenues and chattels (this was a development
of the so-called Saladin Tithe raised earlier for the Crusade); and a
seizure of the wool crop of Cistercian and Gilbertine houses. The
ransom, although never paid in full, caused Richard’s government to
become highly unpopular. Richard also faced some unwillingness on the
part of his English subjects to serve in France. A plan to raise a force
of 300 knights who would serve for a whole year met with opposition led
by the bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury. Richard was, however,
remarkably successful in mustering the resources, financial and human,
of his kingdom in support of his wars. It can also be argued that his
demands on England weakened the realm unduly and that Richard left his
successor a very difficult legacy.

John (1199–1216)Richard, mortally wounded at a siege in France in 1199, was succeeded by
his brother John, one of the most detested of English kings. John’s
reign was characterized by failure. Yet while he must bear a heavy
responsibility for his misfortunes, it is only fair to recognize that he
inherited the resentment that had built up against his brother and
father. Also, while his reign ended in disaster, some of his financial
and military measures anticipated positive developments in Edward I’s
reign.

Loss of French possessionsJohn had nothing like the military ability or reputation of his brother.
He could win a battle in a fit of energy, only to lose his advantage in
a spell of indolence. After repudiating his first wife, Isabella of
Gloucester, John married the fiancée of Hugh IX the Brown of the
Lusignan family, one of his vassals in Poitou. For this offense he was
summoned to answer to Philip II, his feudal overlord for his holdings in
France. When John refused to attend, his lands in France were declared
forfeit. In the subsequent war he succeeded in capturing his nephew
Arthur of Brittany, whom many in Anjou and elsewhere regarded as Richard
I’s rightful heir. Arthur died in mysterious and suspicious
circumstances. But once the great castle of Château Gaillard, Richard
I’s pride and joy, had fallen in March 1204, the collapse of Normandy
followed swiftly. By 1206 all that was left of the inheritance of the
Norman kings was the Channel Islands. John, however, was determined to
recover his losses.

Struggle with the papacyUpon his return to England John became involved in a conflict with Pope
Innocent III over the choice of an archbishop. At Hubert Walter’s death
in 1205 the monks at Canterbury had secretly elected their subprior and
sent him to Rome to receive the pallium from the pope. The secret got
out, however, and John forced the election of one of his confidants,
John de Grey, bishop of Norwich, who then was also sent to Rome.
Innocent III was not a man to miss such a good opportunity to
demonstrate the plenitude of papal power. He quashed both elections and
engineered the election of the learned and talented cardinal Stephen
Langton. John, however, refused to receive Stephen and seized the
revenues of Canterbury. Since John had already quarreled with his half
brother the archbishop of York, who had fled abroad, England was without
either archbishop. In 1208 Innocent imposed an interdict on England,
forbidding the administration of the sacraments and certain church
rites. In the following year he excommunicated John. The bishops of
Winchester and Norwich remained the sole support of John’s power in the
church. John made the most of the opportunity to collect the revenues of
the sees vacated by bishops who had gone into exile.

In theory John’s excommunication freed his vassals from their oaths
of fealty to him, but there was no immediate rebellion. John was able to
conduct highly successful expeditions to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland,
and it was not until 1212 that a plot, involving Robert Fitzwalter and
Eustace de Vesci, was first hatched against the king. John’s brilliant
solution to the problem of multiple threats was to effect a
reconciliation with the papacy. He agreed to accept Stephen Langton as
archbishop, to reinstate the exiled clergy, and to compensate the church
for his exactions. In addition he surrendered his kingdom to the pope,
receiving it back as a fief from the pope. He now had an able ally at no
great cost in terms of concessions on his part.

Revolt of the barons and Magna Carta Ever since the loss of Normandy John had been building up a coalition of
rulers in Germany and the Low Countries to assist him against the French
king. His chief ally was Otto IV, king of Germany and Holy Roman
emperor. Plans for a campaign in Poitou proved very unpopular in
England, especially with the northern barons. In 1214 John’s allies were
defeated at Bouvines, and the king’s own campaign in Poitou
disintegrated. John had to withdraw and return home to face his
disgruntled barons.

John’s efforts had been very costly, and measures such as the tax of
a 13th in 1207 (which raised about £60,000) were highly unpopular. In
addition John levied massive reliefs (inheritance duties) on some
barons: Nicholas de Stuteville, for example, was charged 10,000 marks
(about £6,666) to inherit his brother’s lands in 1205. The fact alone
that John, unlike his predecessors on the throne, spent most of his time
in England made his rule more oppressive. Resistance sprang chiefly from
the northern barons who had opposed service in Poitou, but by the spring
of 1215 many others had joined them in protest against John’s abuse or
disregard of law and custom.

On June 15, 1215, the rebellious barons met John at Runnymede on the
Thames. The king was presented with a document known as the Articles of
the Barons, on the basis of which Magna Carta was drawn up. For a
document hallowed in history during more than 750 years and frequently
cited as a forerunner of the Declaration of Independence and the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Magna Carta is a
singularly undramatic document. It is thorny with problems of feudal law
and custom that are largely untranslatable into modern idiom. Still, it
was remarkable in many ways, not least because it was not written in a
purely baronial interest but aimed to provide protection for all
freemen. It was an attempt to provide guarantees against the sort of
arbitrary disregard of feudal right that the three Angevin kings had
made familiar. The level of reliefs, for example, was set at £100 for a
barony. Some clauses derived from concessions already offered by the
king in efforts to divide opposition. The celebrated clause 39, which
promised judgment by peers or by the law of the land to all freemen, had
its origins in a letter sent by Innocent III to the king. The barons,
however, were not attempting to dismantle royal government; in fact,
many of the legal reforms of Henry II’s day were reinforced. Nor did
they seek to legitimate rebellion but rather they tried to ensure that
the king was beneath rather than above the law. In immediate terms Magna
Carta was a failure, for it was no more than a stage in ineffective
negotiations to prevent civil war. John was released by the pope from
his obligations under it. The document was, however, reissued with some
changes under John’s son, with papal approval, and so it became, in its
1225 version, a part of the permanent law of the land. John himself died
in October 1216, with the civil war still at an inconclusive stage.

Economy and societyFrom about 1180 the pace of economic change quickened, with a shift to
what is known as “high farming.” The direct management of estates began
to replace a rentier system. There was a marked price and wage
inflation. Daily wages for a knight rose from eight pence a day early in
Henry II’s day to two shillings under John. Landlords who relied upon
fixed rents found times difficult, but most responded by taking manors
into their own hands and by profiting from direct sales of demesne
produce at market. A new class of professional estate managers, or
stewards, began to appear. Towns continued to prosper, and many bought
privileges of self-government from Richard I and John. The weaving
industry was important, and England was noted as a producer of very high
quality woolen cloth.

England, notably under Henry II, participated in the cosmopolitan
movement that has come to be called the “12th-century Renaissance.”
Scholars frequented the court, and works on law and administration,
especially the Dialogue of the Exchequer and the law book attributed to
Ranulf de Glanville, show how modern ideas were being applied to the
arts of government. In ecclesiastical architecture new methods of
vaulting gave builders greater freedom, as may be seen, for example, in
the construction of the choir at Canterbury, rebuilt after a fire in
1174 by William of Sens. In military architecture, the traditional
rectangular plan was abandoned in keeps such as those at Orford and
Conisborough. It was a self-confident, innovative, and assertive age.

The 13th century

The 13th century saw England develop a much clearer identity. The loss
of continental possessions under King John focused the attention of the
monarchy on England in a way that had not happened since 1066. Not only
did the concept of the community of the realm develop—used both by the
crown and its opponents—but the period was also notable in
constitutional terms, seeing the beginning of Parliament.

The notion that the realm was a community and that it should be
governed by representatives of that community perhaps found its first
practical expression in the period following the issue of Magna Carta in
which a council of regency ruled on behalf of a child king not yet able
to govern in his own right. The phrase “community of the land” initially
meant little more than the totality of the baronage. But the need to
obtain a wider degree of consent to taxation, and perhaps also the
impact of new ideas derived from Roman law, led to change. In addition
the county communities exerted some pressure. Knights were being asked
to play an increasingly important part in local government, and soon
they made their voice heard at a national level. In the conflict that
broke out between Henry III and the barons in the latter part of that
king’s reign, political terms acquired some sophistication, and under
Edward I the concept of representation was further developed.

Henry III (1216–72)

MinorityThe years until his death in 1219 were dominated by William Marshal, 1st
Earl of Pembroke. As regent in all but name he achieved success in the
civil war and, assisted by the papal legate Guala, did much to restore
royal government in its aftermath. After Marshal’s death there was a
struggle for political power between Hubert de Burgh, the justiciar, and
Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester. Despite factional disputes, by
the time Henry III declared himself to be of age in 1227, the minority
government had achieved much. To have retained control of royal castles
was a notable achievement, while the seizure of Bedford Castle from
Fawkes de Breauté, a former protégé of King John, was a spectacular
triumph.

Early reignHenry came under increasing foreign dominance. His marriage in 1236 to
Eleanor of Provence was followed by an influx of her Savoyard relations,
while the other significant group of foreigners was headed by the king’s
half brothers, the Lusignans (children of his mother, Isabella, by her
second marriage). Attempts to recover the lost lands in France with
expeditions in 1230 and 1242 were unsuccessful. Only in Wales did he
achieve limited military success. In the 1250s plans, backed by the
papacy, were made to place Henry’s second son Edmund on the Sicilian
throne; by 1258 these plans had involved the crown in an impossibly
heavy financial commitment of 135,000 marks. A lenient policy toward the
magnates did not yield much support for the king, and after 1237 it
proved impossible to negotiate the grant of direct taxes with unwilling
subjects.

Henry, moreover, faced a series of political crises. A baronial
revolt in 1233, led by Richard, son of William Marshal, ended in
tragedy. Richard was killed in Ireland, to the king’s great grief: there
were allegations that the king had been tricked into agreeing to the
earl’s destruction. Further political crises in 1238 and 1244 did
nothing to resolve tensions. In 1238 the king’s brother, Richard, Earl
of Cornwall, rebelled, and leading advisers such as William of Savoy
left the royal council. In 1244 Henry III faced opposition in Parliament
from both lay and ecclesiastical magnates. A draft proposal suggested a
complex system for adding four men to the council, who were to be
“conservators of liberties” as well as overseers of royal finance. The
king was able, however, to exploit the differences between his
opponents, and their campaign achieved little. Henry was naive; he was,
on the one hand, overly trustful and, on the other, bitter against those
who betrayed his trust. There was growing discontent at a local level
with the conduct of royal government.

The county communitiesThe society of the period should not be seen solely in terms of the
feudal hierarchy. There are indications that the community of the
county, dominated by local knights and the stewards of the magnates, was
of growing importance in this period. Although the crown could and did
rely extensively on the knights in local government and administration,
the knights were resentful of any intrusion of royal officers from
outside and determined to defend local rights and privileges. Incidents
such as that in Lincolnshire in 1226, when the county community
protested against innovations in the holding of the county court and
appealed to Magna Carta, show a new political awareness at a local
level. The localities resented the increased burdens placed on them by
Henry III’s government, and tension between court and country was
evident.

Simon de Montfort and the Barons’ War
The main crisis of the reign came in 1258 and was brought on by a
cluster of causes. The Savoyard and Lusignan court factions were
divided; there were reverses in Wales; the costs of the Sicilian affair
were mounting; and there was perceived to be a crisis in local
government. In May 1258 the king was compelled to agree to a meeting of
Parliament and to the appointment of a joint committee of dissident
barons and his own supporters, 12 from each side, which was to recommend
measures for the reform of the kingdom. In the Provisions of Oxford,
drawn up in June, a scheme was set out for the creation of a council of
15 to supervise royal government. Parliament was to be held three times
a year, at which the 15 would meet with 12 barons representing “the
community” (le commun in the original French). The office of justiciar
was to be revived, and he, with the chancellor and treasurer, was to
account annually before the council. The new justiciar was to hear
complaints throughout the country against royal officials. Sheriffs were
to be local men, appointed for one year. The households of the king and
queen were to be reformed. The drafting of further measures took time.
In October 1259 a group calling itself the Community of Bachelors, which
seems to have claimed to represent the lesser vassals and knights,
petitioned for the fulfillment of the promises of the magnates and king
to remedy its grievances. As a result the Provisions of Westminster were
duly published, comprising detailed legal measures that in many cases
were in the interests of the knightly class.

The Provisions of Oxford led to two years in which the king was under
tutelage; he was less even than the first among equals because he was
not free to choose his own councillors. The Oxford settlement, however,
began to break down in 1260. There were divisions among the king’s
opponents, notably between the Earl of Gloucester and the ambitious
Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, Henry’s brother-in-law. The king’s
eldest son, Edward, at first backed the unpopular Lusignans, whose exile
had been demanded, but then came to an agreement with Simon de Montfort
before being reconciled to his father. In 1261, when a papal bull
released Henry from his oath to support the Provisions of Oxford, he
dismissed the baronial sheriffs, castellans, and other officials imposed
on him. Simon de Montfort, by now the undisputed leader of the
opposition, raised rebellion, but an agreement was reached to submit the
dispute to the arbitration of Louis IX of France. The verdict of the
Mise of Amiens in 1264, however, was so favourable to Henry III that
Simon de Montfort could not accept it.

Civil war was inevitable. In May 1264 Simon won a resounding victory
at Lewes, and a new form of government was set up. Representatives of
the boroughs were summoned to Parliament for the first time early in
1265, along with knights of the shire. Simon’s motive for summoning
Parliament was undoubtedly political: he needed support from many
elements of society. In May 1265 the young Edward, held hostage since
1264 to ensure fulfillment of the terms of the peace of Lewes, escaped
and rallied the royalist forces, notably the Welsh marcher lords who
played a decisive part throughout these conflicts. In August, Simon was
defeated and slain at Evesham.

Later reignHenry spent the remainder of his reign settling the problems created by
the rebellion. He deprived Simon’s supporters of their lands, but “the
Disinherited” fought back from redoubts in forests or fens. The garrison
of Kenilworth Castle carried on a notable resistance. Terms were set in
1266 for former rebels to buy back their lands, and with the issue of
the Statute of Marlborough, which renewed some of the reform measures of
the Provisions of Westminster, the process of reconstruction began. By
1270 the country was sufficiently settled for Edward to be able to set
off on crusade, from which he did not return until two years after his
father’s death. By then the community of the realm was ready to begin
working with, not against, the crown.

Edward I (1272–1307)

Edward was in many ways the ideal medieval king. He went through a
difficult apprenticeship, was a good fighter, and was a man who enjoyed
both war and statecraft. His crusading reputation gave him prestige, and
his chivalric qualities were admired. Although he had a gift for
leadership, he lacked sympathy for others and had an obstinacy that led
to inflexibility.

Law and governmentIn the 13th century the development of law became a dominant concern, as
is shown by the great treatise On the Laws and Customs of England,
attributed to the royal judge Bracton but probably put together in the
1220s and ’30s under one of his predecessors on the King’s Bench. Soon
after Edward’s return to England in 1274, a major inquiry into
government in the localities took place that yielded the so-called
Hundred Rolls, a heterogeneous group of records, and brought home the
need for changes in the law. In 1275 the First Statute of Westminster
was issued. A succession of other statutes followed in later years,
providing a kind of supplement to the common law. Some measures
protected the king’s rights; others remedied the grievances of his
subjects. In the quo warranto proceedings set up under the Statute of
Gloucester of 1278 the magnates were asked by what warrant they claimed
rights of jurisdiction and other franchises. This created much argument,
which was resolved in the Statute of Quo Warranto of 1290. By the
Statute of Mortmain of 1279 it was provided that no more land was to be
given to the church without royal license. The Statute of Quia Emptores
of 1290 had the effect of preventing further subinfeudation of land. In
the first and second statutes of Westminster, of 1275 and 1285, many
deficiencies in the law were corrected, such as those concerning the
relationship between lords and tenants and the way in which the system
of distraint was operated. Merchants benefited from the Statute of Acton
Burnell of 1283 and the Statute of Merchants of 1285, which facilitated
debt collection. Problems of law and order were tackled in the Statute
of Winchester of 1285.

FinanceEdward began his reign with heavy debts incurred on crusade, and his
various wars also were costly. In 1275 Edward gained a secure financial
basis when he negotiated a grant of export duties on wool, woolfells,
and hides that brought in an average of £10,000 a year. He borrowed
extensively from Italian bankers on the security of these customs
revenues. The system of levying taxes on an assessment of the value of
movable goods was also of great value. Successive profitable taxes were
granted, mostly in Parliament. It was partly in return for one such tax,
in 1290, that Edward expelled the Jews from England. Their moneylending
activities had made them unpopular, and royal exploitation had so
impoverished the Jews that there was no longer an advantage for Edward
in keeping them in England.

The growth of ParliamentEdward fostered the concept of the community of the realm and the
practice of calling representative knights of the shire and burgesses
from the towns to Parliament. Representatives were needed to give
consent to taxation, as well as to enhance communication between the
king and his subjects. The process of petitioning the king and his
council in Parliament was greatly encouraged. Historians have argued
much about the nature of Edward’s Parliament, some seeing the
dispensation of justice as the central element, others emphasizing the
multifaceted character of an increasingly complex institution. Some see
Edward as responding to the dictates of Roman law, while others
interpret the development of Parliament in terms of the practical
solution of financial and political problems. Historians used to refer
to the 1295 assembly as the Model Parliament because it contained all
the elements later associated with the word parliament, but in fact
these can all be found earlier. The writs to the sheriffs asking them to
call knights and burgesses did, however, reach a more or less final form
in 1295. They were to be summoned “with full and sufficient authority on
behalf of themselves and the community . . . to do whatever shall be
ordained by common counsel.” Representatives of the lower clergy were
also summoned. This Parliament was fully representative of local
communities and of the whole community of the realm, but many
Parliaments were attended solely by the magnates with no representatives
present.

Edward’s warsIn the first half of his reign Edward was thoroughly successful in
Wales. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd, had taken advantage of
the Barons’ War to try to expand his authority throughout Wales. He
refused to do homage to Edward, and in 1277 the English king conducted a
short and methodical campaign against him. Using a partly feudal, partly
paid army, the core of which was provided by the royal household
knights, and a fleet from the Cinque Ports, Edward won a quick victory
and exacted from Llywelyn the Treaty of Conway. Llywelyn agreed to
perform fealty and homage, to pay a large indemnity (from which he was
soon excused), and to surrender certain districts of North Wales. There
was considerable Welsh resentment after 1277 at the manner in which
Edward imposed his jurisdiction in Wales.

David, Llywelyn’s younger brother, was responsible for a renewal of
war in 1282. He was soon joined by Llywelyn, who was killed in battle
late in the year. David was captured and executed as a traitor in 1283.
This second Welsh war proved much longer, more costly, and more
difficult for the English than the first. In the succeeding peace North
Wales was organized into counties, and law was revised along English
lines. Major castles, notably Flint and Rhuddlan, had been built after
the first Welsh war; now Conway, Caernarvon, and Harlech were started,
designed by a Savoyard expert, Master James of St. George. Merchant
settlements, colonized with English craftsmen and merchants, were
founded. Archbishop Pecham reorganized the Welsh church and brought it
more fully under the sway of Canterbury. A brief revolt in 1287 was soon
quelled, but Edward faced a major rebellion in 1294–95, after which he
founded the last of his Welsh castles, Beaumaris in Anglesey.

Edward devoted much attention to Gascony, the land he held in
southwestern France. He went there prior to returning to England at the
start of the reign and spent the period 1286–89 there. In 1294 he had to
undertake a costly defense of his French lands, when war began with
Philip IV, king of France. Open hostilities lasted until 1297. In this
case the French were the aggressors. Following private naval warfare
between Gascon and Norman sailors, Philip summoned Edward (who, as Duke
of Aquitaine, was his vassal) to his court and, having deceived English
negotiators, decreed Gascony confiscate. Edward built up a grand
alliance against the French, but the war proved costly and inconclusive.

Edward intervened in Scotland in 1291, when he claimed jurisdiction
over a complex succession dispute. King Alexander III had been killed
when his horse fell one stormy night in 1286. His heiress was his
three-year-old granddaughter, Margaret, the Maid of Norway. Arrangements
were made for her to marry Edward’s son Edward, but these plans were
thwarted by Margaret’s death in 1290. There were 13 claimants to the
Scottish throne, the two main candidates being John de Balliol and
Robert de Bruce, both descendants of David, 8th Earl of Huntingdon,
brother of William I the Lion. Balliol was the grandson of David’s
eldest daughter, and Bruce was the son of his second daughter. A court
of 104 auditors, of whom 40 were chosen by Balliol and 40 by Bruce, was
set up. Balliol was designated king and performed fealty and homage to
Edward.

Edward did all he could to emphasize his own claims to feudal
suzerainty over Scotland, and his efforts to put these into effect
provoked Scottish resistance. In 1295 the Scots, having imposed a
baronial council on Balliol, made a treaty with the French. War was
inevitable, and in a swift and successful campaign Edward defeated
Balliol in 1296, forcing him to abdicate. The victory, however, had been
too easy. Revolt against the inept officials Edward had appointed to
rule in Scotland came in 1297, headed by William Wallace and Andrew
Moray. Victory for Edward at the battle of Falkirk in 1298, however, did
not win the war. A lengthy series of costly campaigns appeared to have
brought success by 1304, and in the next year Edward set up a scheme for
governing Scotland, by now termed by the English a land, not a kingdom.
But in 1306 Robert de Bruce, grandson of the earlier claimant to the
throne, a man who had fought on both sides in the war, seized the
Scottish throne and reopened the conflict, which continued into the
reign of Edward II, who succeeded his father in 1307.

It has been claimed that during his wars Edward I transformed the
traditional feudal host into an efficient, paid army. In fact, feudal
summonses continued throughout his reign, though only providing a
proportion of the army. The paid forces of the royal household were a
very important element, but it is clear that the magnates also provided
substantial unpaid forces for campaigns of which they approved. The
scale of infantry recruitment increased notably, enabling Edward to
muster armies up to 30,000 strong. The king’s military successes were
primarily due to the skill of his government in mobilizing resources, in
terms of men, money, and supplies, on an unprecedented scale.

Domestic difficultiesThe wars in the 1290s against the Welsh, French, and Scots imposed an
immense burden on England. The character of the king’s rule changed as
the preoccupation with war put an end to further reform of government
and law. Edward’s subjects resented the heavy taxation, large-scale
recruitment, and seizures of food supplies and wool crops. Pope Boniface
VIII forbade the clergy to pay taxes to the king. A political crisis
ensued in 1297, which was only partly resolved by the reissue of Magna
Carta and some additional concessions. Argument continued for much of
the rest of the reign, while the king’s debts mounted. The Riccardi,
Edward’s bankers in the first part of the reign, were effectively
bankrupted in 1294, and their eventual successors, the Frescobaldi, were
unable to give the king the same level of support as their predecessors.

Social, economic, and cultural changeThe population expanded rapidly in the 13th century, reaching a level of
about five million. Great landlords prospered with the system of high
farming, but the average size of small peasant holdings fell, with no
compensating rise in productivity. There has been debate about the fate
of the knightly class: some historians have argued that lesser
landowners suffered a decline in wealth and numbers, while others have
pointed to their increased political importance as evidence of their
prosperity. Although there were probably both gainers and losers, the
overall number of knights in England almost certainly fell to less than
2,000. Ties between magnates and their feudal tenants slackened as the
relationship became increasingly a legal rather than a personal one.
Lords began to adopt new methods of recruiting their retinues, using
contracts demanding service either for life or for a short term, in
exchange for fees, robes, and wages. Towns continued to grow, with many
new ones being founded, but the weaving industry suffered a decline, in
part because of competition from rural areas and in part as a result of
restrictive guild practices. In trade, England became increasingly
dependent on exports of raw wool.

The advent of the friars introduced a new element to the church. The
universities of Oxford and Cambridge were developing rapidly, and in
Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, England produced two major, if
somewhat eccentric, intellectual figures. Ecclesiastical architecture
flourished, showing a strong French influence: Henry III’s patronage of
the new Westminster Abbey was particularly notable. Edward I’s castles
in North Wales rank high among the finest examples of medieval military
architecture.

The 14th century

The 14th century, despite some gains, was a bleak age. At its beginning
and close were kings whose reigns ended in failure. In between, however,
came the 50-year reign of the popular and successful Edward III. During
the century the importance of the Commons in Parliament continued to
grow. But dominant factors of the age were war and plague. The increased
scale, cost, and frequency of wars from the 1290s onward imposed heavy
burdens on state and society. Conflicts between England and France
continued intermittently throughout the century, those from 1337 onward
being called the Hundred Years’ War. The Black Death struck in 1348–49;
it became endemic, recurring several times in the second half of the
century, and brought with it profound economic and social change.

Edward II (1307–27)

Edward II’s reign was an almost unmitigated disaster. He inherited some
of his problems from his father, the most significant being a treasury
deficit of some £200,000, and the Scottish war. He inherited none of his
father’s strengths. He was a good horseman but did not enjoy swordplay
or tournaments, preferring swimming, ditch digging, thatching, and
theatricals. Although surrounded by a ruling class strongly tied to his
family by blood and service, Edward rejected the company of his peers,
preferring that of Piers Gaveston, son of a Gascon knight, with whom he
probably had a homosexual relationship. Edward’s father had exiled
Gaveston in an attempt to quash the friendship. Edward the son recalled
him and conferred on him the highest honours he had to bestow: the
earldom of Cornwall and marriage to his niece Margaret de Clare, sister
of the Earl of Gloucester. Edward also recalled Archbishop Winchelsey
and Bishop Bek of Durham, both of whom had gone into exile under Edward
I. He dismissed and put on trial one of his father’s most trusted
servants, the treasurer, Walter Langton.

Historians used to emphasize the constitutional struggle that took
place in this reign, seeing a conflict between a baronial ideal of
government conducted with the advice of the magnates and based on the
great offices of state, the Chancery and the Exchequer, on the one hand,
and a royal policy of reliance upon the departments of the royal
household, notably the wardrobe and chamber, on the other. More recent
interpretations have shifted the emphasis to personal rivalries and
ambitions.

Opposition to Edward began to build as early as January 1308. At the
coronation in February a new clause was added to the king’s oath that
obligated him to promise that he would keep such laws “as the community
of the realm shall have chosen.” In April the barons came armed to
Parliament and warned the king that “homage and the oath of allegiance
are stronger and bind more by reason of the crown than by reason of the
person of the king.” The first phase of the reign culminated in the
production of the Ordinances in 1311. They were in part directed against
Gaveston—who was again to be exiled—and other royal favourites, but much
of the document looked back to the grievances of Edward I’s later years,
echoing concessions made by the king in 1300. Hostility was expressed to
the practice of prise (compulsory purchase of foodstuffs for royal
armies). Baronial consent was required for foreign war (possibly in
remembrance of Edward I’s Flanders campaign of 1297). The privy seal was
not to be used to interfere in justice. A long list of officials were to
be chosen with the advice and consent of the barons in Parliament. All
revenues were to be paid into the Exchequer. The king’s bankers, the
Frescobaldi, who had also served Edward I, were to be expelled from the
realm. Royal grants of land made since the appointment of the Ordainers
in 1310 were annulled. It is noteworthy that the first clear statement
that consent should be given in Parliament is to be found in the
Ordinances. No explicit role, however, was given to the Commons, the
representative element in Parliament.

The middle years of Edward’s reign were dominated by the enigmatic
figure of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, the king’s cousin and chief
opponent, whose surly inactivity for long periods blocked effective
political initiatives. His political program never amounted to much more
than enforcement of the Ordinances. He supervised the capture and
execution of Gaveston in 1312 and came to dominance after the disastrous
defeat of a royal army at the hands of the Scottish pikemen and bowmen
at Bannockburn in 1314. At the Lincoln Parliament of 1316 he was named
chief councillor, but he soon withdrew from active government.

A conciliar regime was set up with the Treaty of Leake of 1318. This
was once thought to have been the work of a “middle party,” but the
political alliances of this period cannot be categorized in such a
manner. New royal favourites emerged, and in 1321 the peace was broken
when the Welsh marcher lords moved against two of them, a father and
son, both called Hugh Despenser. When Parliament met, the two were
exiled, but they soon returned. In this brief civil war, which ended in
1322, Edward was victorious. He had Lancaster executed for treason after
his ignominious defeat at Boroughbridge in 1322. In death Lancaster
attracted a popular sympathy he had rarely received in life, with many
rumours of miracles at his tomb. Edward had many of Lancaster’s
followers executed in a horrific bloodbath. In the same year the
Ordinances were repealed in Parliament at York, and in the Statute of
York the intention of returning to the constitutional practices of the
past was announced. But in specifying that the “consent of the prelates,
earls, and barons, and of the community of the realm” was required for
legislation, the Statute of York provided much scope for historical
argument; some historians have made claims for a narrow baronial
interpretation of what is meant by “community of the realm,” while
others have seen the terminology as giving the representative element in
Parliament a new role. A tract written in this period, the Modus tenendi
parliamentum, certainly placed a new emphasis on the representatives of
shire, borough, and lower clergy. In terms of practical politics,
however, the Statute of York permitted the fullest resumption of royal
authority.

The final period of the reign saw the Despensers restored to power.
They carried out various administrative reforms, ably assisted by the
treasurer, Walter Stapledon. For the first time in many years, a
substantial treasury of about £60,000 was built up. At the same time,
crude blackmail and blatant corruption characterized this regime. A
brief war against the French was unsuccessful. The reign ended with the
invasion of Edward’s estranged queen, Isabella, assisted by Roger
Mortimer, soon to be Earl of March. With the support above all of the
Londoners, the government was overthrown, the Despensers executed, and
the king imprisoned. Parliament was called in his name, and he was
simultaneously deposed and persuaded to abdicate in favour of his son,
Edward III. After two conspiracies to release him, he was almost
certainly killed in Berkeley Castle.

Edward III (1327–77)

The Hundred Years’ War, to 1360Edward III achieved personal power when he overthrew his mother’s and
Mortimer’s dominance in 1330 at the age of 17. Their regime had been
just as corrupt as that of the Despensers but less constructive. The
young king had been sadly disappointed by an unsuccessful campaign
against the Scots in 1327; in 1333 the tide turned when he achieved
victory at Halidon Hill. Edward gave his support to Edward Balliol as
claimant to the Scottish throne, rather than to Robert I’s son David II.
But as long as the Scots had the support of the French king Philip VI,
final success proved impossible, and this was one of the causes for the
outbreak of the French war in 1337. Another was the long-standing
friction over Gascony, chronic since 1294 and stemming ultimately from
the Treaty of Paris of 1259. By establishing that the kings of England
owed homage to the kings of France for Gascony the treaty had created an
awkward relationship. The building of bastides (fortified towns) by each
side contributed to friction, as did piracy by English and French
sailors. The English resented any appeals to the French court by
Gascons. English-French rivalry also extended into the Netherlands,
which was dependent on English wool for industrial prosperity but some
of whose states, including Flanders, were subject to French claims of
suzerainty. Finally, there was the matter of the French throne itself.
Edward, through his mother, was closer in blood to the last ruler of the
Capetian dynasty than was the Valois Philip VI. The claim was of great
propaganda value to Edward, for it meant that he did not appear as
simply a rebellious vassal of the French king. His allies could fight
for him without dishonour.

The initial phase of the war was inconclusive. Edward won a naval
victory at Sluys in 1340, but he lacked the resources to follow it up.
Although intervention in a succession dispute in Brittany saw the
English register successes, stalemate came in 1343. The first great
triumph came with the invasion of Normandy in 1346. As Edward was
retreating northward, he defeated the French at Crécy and then settled
to the siege of Calais, which fell in 1347. The French allies, the
Scots, were also defeated in 1346 at Neville’s Cross, where their king,
David II, was taken prisoner. The focus of the war moved south in 1355,
when the king’s son, the Black Prince, was sent to Gascony. He launched
a successful raid in 1355 and another in 1356, and at Poitiers he
defeated and captured the French king John, for whom a heavy ransom was
charged. As at Crécy, English archery proved decisive. A major campaign
in 1359–60, planned as the decisive blow, proved unsatisfactory to the
English. Rheims did not open its gates to Edward as he had hoped, and a
storm caused severe damage to the army and its baggage in April 1360.
Negotiations led to a truce at Brétigny, and in the subsequent
negotiations Edward agreed to drop his claim to the French throne. In
return, English possessions in France would be held in full sovereignty.
The terms, particularly those involving the exchange of territory, were
not carried out in full, but neither side wished to reopen the war
immediately. War was costly, and Edward III’s armies were no longer
recruited by feudal means. Most were formed by contract, and all who
fought received wages as well as a share of the profits of campaigning.
These could be substantial if wealthy nobles were captured and ransomed.

Domestic achievementsThe war, and the need to finance it, dominated domestic affairs under
Edward III. The king faced a crisis in 1340–41 because he found himself
disastrously indebted by 1339, even though he had received generous
grants from Parliament since 1336. It was estimated that he owed
£300,000. He had seized wool exports and had borrowed recklessly from
Italian, English, and Flemish bankers and merchants. A grant in 1340 of
a ninth of all produce failed to yield the expected financial return. In
the autumn of 1340 Edward returned from abroad and charged John
Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury, the man who had been in charge in
his absence, with working against him. He also engaged in a widespread
purge of royal ministers. Stratford whipped up opposition to the king,
and in Parliament in 1341 statutes were passed that were reminiscent of
the kind of restraints put on earlier and less popular kings. Officers
of state and of the king’s household were to be appointed and sworn in
Parliament. Commissioners were to be sworn in Parliament to audit the
royal accounts. Peers were to be entitled to trial before their peers in
Parliament. Breaches of the Charters were to be reported in Parliament.
Charges were brought against Stratford, only to be dropped. But in 1343
Edward III was able to repudiate the statutes. The crisis had little
permanent effect, though it did demonstrate the king’s dependence on
Parliament, and within it on the Commons, for supply.

In the following years the country was well governed, with William
Edington and John Thoresby serving the king loyally and well. Edward’s
compliance toward the requests of the Commons made it relatively easy
for him to obtain the grants he needed. Discontent in 1346–47 was
overcome by the good news from France. Much of the legislation passed at
this time was in the popular interest. In 1352 the king agreed that no
one should be bound to find soldiers for the war save by common consent
in Parliament, and demands for purveyance were moderated. The Statute of
Provisors of 1351 set up statutory procedures against the unpopular
papal practice of making appointments to church benefices in England,
and the Statute of Praemunire two years later forbade appeals to Rome in
patronage disputes. The crown in practice had sufficient weapons
available to it to deal with these matters, but Edward was ready to
accept the views of his subjects, even though he did little about them
later. Much attention was given to the organization of the wool trade
because it was intimately bound up with the finance of war. In 1363 the
Calais staple was set up, under which all English exports of raw wool
were channeled through Calais. The currency was reformed very
effectively with the introduction in the 1340s of a gold coinage
alongside the traditional silver pennies.

Law and orderThe maintenance of law and order, a prime duty for a medieval king, had
reached a point of crisis by the end of Edward I’s reign when special
commissions, known as commissions of trailbaston, were set up to try to
deal with the problem. Matters became worse under Edward II, from whose
reign there is much evidence of gang warfare, often involving men of
knightly status. Maintaining law and order was also an urgent issue in
Edward III’s reign. In the early years there was conflict between the
magnates, who wanted to be given full authority in the localities, and
the county knights and gentry, who favoured locally appointed keepers of
the peace. A possible solution, favoured by the chief justice, Geoffrey
Scrope, was to extend the jurisdiction of the king’s bench into the
localities. There was a major crime wave in 1346 and 1347, intensified
by the activities of soldiers returning from France. The justices
reacted by greatly extending the use of accusations of treason, but the
Commons protested against procedures they claimed did little to promote
order and much to impoverish the people. In 1352 the crown gave way,
producing in the Statute of Treason a narrow definition of great treason
that made it impossible to threaten common criminals with the harsh
penalties which followed conviction for treason. The concern of the
Commons had been that in cases of treason goods and land forfeited by
those found guilty went to the crown, not to the overlord. In 1361 the
position of justice of the peace was established by statute, marking
another success for the Commons.

The crises of Edward’s later yearsThe war with France was reopened in 1369 and went badly. The king was in
his dotage and, since the death of Queen Philippa in 1369, in the
clutches of his unscrupulous mistress Alice Perrers. The heir to the
throne, Edward the Black Prince, was ill and died in 1376. Lionel of
Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, the next son, had died in 1368, and John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the third surviving son, was largely occupied
with his claims to Castile, his inheritance through his second wife,
Constance. Edmund of Langley, the fourth surviving son, was a nonentity,
and the youngest, Thomas of Woodstock, was not yet of age. In 1371
Parliament demanded the dismissal of William of Wykeham, the chancellor,
and the appointment of laymen to state offices. The new government,
dominated by men such as William Latimer, the chamberlain, proved
unpopular and ineffective. When the so-called Good Parliament met in
1376, grievances had accumulated and needed to be dealt with. As in
previous crises, a committee consisting of four bishops, four earls, and
four barons was set up to take responsibility for the reforms. Then,
under the leadership of Peter de la Mare, who may be termed the first
Speaker, the Commons impeached Latimer, Alice Perrers, and a number of
ministers and officials, some of whom had profited personally from the
administration of the royal finances. The Commons took the role of
prosecutors before the Lords in what amounted to a new procedure.

John of Gaunt, an unpopular figure at this time, had, as a result of
the king’s illness, presided uncomfortably over the Good Parliament. He
ensured that the achievement of Peter de la Mare and his colleagues was
ephemeral, taking charge of the government at the end of the reign. De
la Mare was jailed in Nottingham. William of Wykeham was attacked for
alleged peculation as chancellor, and Alice Perrers was restored to
court. The Parliament of 1377 reversed all important acts of the Good
Parliament. There were rumours in London that Gaunt aimed at the throne.
But the Black Prince’s widow made peace between Gaunt and the Londoners,
and Wykeham’s temporalities were restored. The reign ended in truce, if
not peace.

Richard II (1377–99)

Richard II’s reign was fraught with crises—economic, social, political,
and constitutional. He was 10 years old when his grandfather died, and
the first problem the country faced was having to deal with his
minority. A “continual council” was set up to “govern the king and his
kingdom.” Although John of Gaunt was still the dominant figure in the
royal family, neither he nor his brothers were included.

The Peasants’ Revolt (1381)Financing the increasingly expensive and unsuccessful war with France
was a major preoccupation. At the end of Edward III’s reign a new
device, a poll tax of four pence a head, had been introduced. A similar
but graduated tax followed in 1379, and in 1380 another set at one
shilling a head was granted. It proved inequitable and impractical, and,
when the government tried to speed up collection in the spring of 1381,
a popular rebellion—the Peasants’ Revolt—ensued. Although the poll tax
was the spark that set it off, there were also deeper causes related to
changes in the economy and to political developments. The government, in
particular, engendered hostility to the legal system by its policies of
expanding the powers of the justices of the peace at the expense of
local and manorial courts. In addition, popular poor preachers spread
subversive ideas with slogans such as: “When Adam delved and Eve span /
Who was then the gentleman?” The Peasants’ Revolt began in Essex and
Kent. Widespread outbreaks occurred through the southeast of England,
taking the form of assaults on tax collectors, attacks on landlords and
their manor houses, destruction of documentary evidence of villein
status, and attacks on lawyers. Attacks on religious houses, such as
that at St. Albans, were particularly severe, perhaps because they had
been among the most conservative of landlords in commuting labour
services.

The men of Essex and Kent moved on London to attack the king’s
councillors. Admitted to the city by sympathizers, they attacked John of
Gaunt’s palace of the Savoy as well as the Fleet prison. On June 14 the
young king made them various promises at Mile End; on the same day they
broke into the Tower and killed Sudbury, the chancellor, Hales, the
treasurer, and other officials. On the next day Richard met the rebels
again at Smithfield, and their main leader, Wat Tyler, presented their
demands. But during the negotiations Tyler was attacked and slain by the
mayor of London. The young king rode forward and reassured the rebels,
asking them to follow him to Clerkenwell. This proved to be a turning
point, and the rebels, their supplies exhausted, began to make their way
home. Richard went back on the promises he had made, saying, “Villeins
ye are and villeins ye shall remain.” In October Parliament confirmed
the king’s revocation of charters but demanded amnesty save for a few
special offenders.

The events of the Peasants’ Revolt may have given Richard an exalted
idea of his own powers and prerogative as a result of his success at
Smithfield, but for the rebels the gains of the rising amounted to no
more than the abolition of the poll taxes. Improvements in the social
position of the peasantry did occur, but not so much as a consequence of
the revolt as of changes in the economy that would have occurred anyhow.

John Wycliffe Religious unrest was another subversive factor under Richard II. England
had been virtually free from heresy until John Wycliffe, a priest and an
Oxford scholar, began his career as a religious reformer with two
treatises in 1375–76. He argued that the exercise of lordship depended
on grace and that, therefore, a sinful man had no right to authority.
Priests and even the pope himself, Wycliffe went on to argue, might not
necessarily be in a state of grace and thus would lack authority. Such
doctrines appealed to anticlerical sentiments and brought Wycliffe into
direct conflict with the church hierarchy, although he received
protection from John of Gaunt. The beginning of the Great Schism in 1378
gave Wycliffe fresh opportunities to attack the papacy, and in a
treatise of 1379 on the Eucharist he openly denied the doctrine of
transubstantiation. He was ordered before a church court at Lambeth in
1378. In 1380 his views were condemned by a commission of theologians at
Oxford, and he was forced to leave the university. At Lutterworth he
continued to write voluminously until his death in 1384. The movement he
inspired was known as Lollardy. Two of his followers translated the
Bible into English, and others went out to spread Wycliffe’s doctrines,
which soon became debased and popularized. The movement continued to
expand despite the death of its founder and the government’s attempts to
destroy it.

Political struggles and Richard’s depositionSoon after putting down the Peasants’ Revolt, Richard began to build up
a court party, partly in opposition to Gaunt. A crisis was precipitated
in 1386 when the king asked Parliament for a grant to meet the French
threat. Parliament responded by demanding the dismissal of the king’s
favourites, but Richard insisted that he would not dismiss so much as a
scullion in his kitchen at the request of Parliament. In the end he was
forced by the impeachment of the chancellor, Michael de la Pole, to
agree to the appointment of a reforming commission. Richard withdrew
from London and went on a “gyration” of the country. He called the
judges before him at Shrewsbury and asked them to pronounce the actions
of Parliament illegal. An engagement at Radcot Bridge, at which
Richard’s favourite, Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford, was defeated,
settled the matter of ascendancy. In the Merciless Parliament of 1388
five lords accused the king’s friends of treason under an expansive
definition of the crime.

Richard was chastened, but he began to recover his authority as early
as the autumn of 1388 at the Cambridge Parliament. Declaring himself to
be of age in 1389, Richard announced that he was taking over the
government. He pardoned the Lords Appellant and ruled with some
moderation until 1394, when his queen, Anne of Bohemia, died. After
putting down a rebellion in Ireland, he was, for a time, almost popular.
He began to implement his personal policy once more and rebuilt a royal
party with the help of a group of young nobles. He made a 28-year truce
with France and married the French king’s seven-year-old daughter. He
built up a household of faithful servants, including the notorious Sir
John Bushy, Sir William Bagot, and Sir Henry Green. He enlisted
household troops and built a wide network of “king’s knights” in the
counties, distributing to them his personal badge, the White Hart.

The first sign of renewed crisis emerged in January 1397, when
complaints were put forward in Parliament and their author, Thomas
Haxey, was adjudged a traitor. Richard’s rule, based on fear rather than
consent, became increasingly tyrannical. Three of the Lords Appellant of
1388 were arrested in July and tried in Parliament. The Earl of Arundel
was executed and Warwick exiled. Gloucester, whose death was reported to
Parliament, had probably been murdered. The acts of the 1388 Parliament
were repealed. Richard was granted the customs revenues for life, and
the powers of Parliament were delegated to a committee after the
assembly was dissolved. Richard also built up a power base in Cheshire.

Events leading to Richard’s downfall followed quickly. The Duke of
Norfolk and Henry Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt’s son, accused each other
of treason and were banished, the former for life, the latter for 10
years. When Gaunt himself died early in 1399, Richard confiscated his
estates instead of allowing his son to claim them. Richard, seemingly
secure, went off to Ireland. Henry, however, landed at Ravenspur in
Yorkshire to claim, as he said, his father’s estates and the hereditary
stewardship. The Percys, the chief lords in the north, welcomed him.
Popular support was widespread, and when Richard returned from Ireland
his cause was lost.

The precise course of events is hard to reconstruct, in view of
subsequent alterations to the records. A Parliament was called in
Richard’s name, but before it was fully assembled at the end of
September, its members were presented with Richard’s alleged abdication
and Henry’s claim to the throne as legitimate descendant of Henry III as
well as by right of conquest. Thirty-three articles of deposition were
set forth against Richard, and his abdication and deposition were duly
accepted. Richard died at Pontefract Castle, either of self-starvation
or by smothering. Thus ended the last attempt of a medieval king to
exercise arbitrary power. Whether or not Richard had been motivated by
new theories about the nature of monarchy, as some have claimed, he had
failed in the practical measures necessary to sustain his power. He had
tried to rule through fear and mistrust in his final years, but he had
neither gained sufficient support among the magnates by means of
patronage nor created a popular basis of support in the shires.

Economic crisis and cultural changeAlthough the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 dominated the economy
of the 14th century, a number of adversities had already occurred in the
preceding decades. Severe rains in 1315 and 1316 caused famine, which
led to the spread of disease. Animal epidemics in succeeding years added
to the problems, as did an increasing shortage of currency in the 1330s.
Economic expansion, which had been characteristic of the 13th century,
had slowed to a halt. The Black Death, possibly a combination of bubonic
and pneumonic plagues, carried off from one-third to one-half of the
population. In some respects it took time for its effects to become
detrimental to the economy, but with subsequent outbreaks, as in 1361
and 1369, the population declined further, causing a severe labour
shortage. By the 1370s wages had risen dramatically and prices of
foodstuffs fallen. Hired labourers, being fewer, asked for higher wages
and better food, and peasant tenants, also fewer, asked for better
conditions of tenure when they took up land. Some landlords responded by
trying to reassert labour services where they had been commuted. The
Ordinance (1349) and Statute (1351) of Labourers tried to set maximum
wages at the levels of the pre-Black Death years, but strict enforcement
proved impossible. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was one result of the
social tension caused by the adjustments needed after the epidemic.
Great landlords saw their revenues fall as a result of the Black Death,
although probably by only about 10 percent, whereas for the lower orders
of society real wages rose sharply by the last quarter of the 14th
century because of low grain prices and high wages.

Edward III ruined the major Italian banking companies in England by
failing to repay loans early in the Hundred Years’ War. This provided
openings for English merchants, who were given monopolies of wool
exports by the crown in return for their support. The most notable was
William de la Pole of Hull, whose family rose to noble status. Heavy
taxation of wool exports was one reason for the growth of the cloth
industry and cloth exports in the 14th century. The wine trade from
Gascony was also important. In contrast to the 13th century, no new
towns were founded, but London in particular continued to prosper
despite the ravages of plague.

In cultural terms, a striking change in the 14th century was the
increasing use of English. Although an attempt to make the use of
English mandatory in the law courts failed because lawyers claimed that
they could not plead accurately in the language, the vernacular began to
creep into public documents and records. Henry of Lancaster even used
English when he claimed the throne in 1399. Chaucer wrote in both French
and English, but his important poetry is in the latter. The early 14th
century was an impressive age for manuscript illumination in England,
with the so-called East Anglian school, of which the celebrated Luttrell
Psalter represents a late example. In ecclesiastical architecture the
development of the Perpendicular style, largely in the second half of
the 14th century, was particularly notable.

Lancaster and York

Recent scholarship has done much to transform the view that the 15th
century was a period dominated by a factious nobility, when constructive
achievements were few. In particular, the character of the nobility has
been reconceived, and the century has emerged in a more positive light.
It appears that even in politics and administration much was done that
anticipated the achievements of the Tudors, while in the economy the
foundations for future growth and prosperity were laid.

Henry IV (1399–1413)

Henry of Lancaster gave promise of being able to develop a better
rapport with his people than his predecessor, Richard II. He was a
warrior of great renown who had traveled to Jerusalem and had fought in
Prussia against infidels. He also had a reputation for affability and
for statesmanlike self-control, and he had won his crown with the
support of “the estates of the realm.” It did not matter much whether
that meant Parliament or something more vague and symbolic. Henry,
however, intended to rule as a true king, with the prerogatives of the
crown unimpaired, whereas his Parliaments, from the first, expected him
to govern with the advice and consent of his council, and to listen to
Parliament regarding requests for money. Thus although Archbishop
Arundel stressed in 1399 that Henry wished to be properly advised and
that he intended to be governed by common advice and counsel, some
argument and conflict was inevitable.

The rebellionsHenry’s immediate task after his accession was to put down a rebellion
threatening to restore Richard. The earls of Rutland, Kent, and
Huntingdon, supported by the bishop of Carlisle, conspired against the
king. The rising was unexpected, but Henry won support in London and
defeated the rebels near Cirencester. More significant was the revolt of
Owain Glyn Dwr that broke out in 1399 and became serious in 1402. Glyn
Dwr sought a French alliance and captured Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the
Earl of March, Richard II’s legitimate heir. Mortimer was persuaded to
join the rebellion, which now aimed to make March king. In 1403 the
Welsh rebels joined the Percys of Northumberland in a powerful
coalition. The younger Percy, “Hotspur,” was killed at Shrewsbury in
1403. The elder was pardoned, only to rebel once more in 1405, again in
conjunction with Glyn Dwr. Henry broke the alliance with a victory at
Shipton Moor. Percy was finally killed in 1408, but Glyn Dwr, driven
into the mountains of North Wales, was never captured.

Henry and Parliament Henry’s relations with his Parliaments were uneasy. The main problem, of
course, was money. Henry, as Duke of Lancaster, was a wealthy man, but
as king he had forfeited some of his income by repudiating Richard II’s
tactics, though he also avoided Richard’s extravagance. His needs were
still great, threatened as he was by rebellion in England and war in
France. A central issue was Parliament’s demand, as in 1404, that the
king take back all royal land that had been granted and leased out since
1366. This was so that he might “live of his own.” The king could hardly
adopt a measure that would cause much upheaval. Arguments in 1406 were
so protracted that the Parliament met for 159 days, becoming the longest
Parliament of the medieval period. On several occasions the Commons
insisted on taxes being spent in the way that they wished, primarily on
the defense of the realm.

The later Parliaments of Henry’s reign brought no new problems, but
the king became less active in government as he was more and more
incapacitated by illness. From 1408 to 1411 the government was dominated
first by Archbishop Arundel and then by the king’s son Henry, who, with
the support of the Beaufort brothers, sons of John of Gaunt by Katherine
Swynford, attempted to win control over the council. There was much
argument over the best political strategy to adopt in France, where
civil war was raging; young Henry wanted to resume the war in France,
but the king favoured peace. In 1411 the king recovered his authority,
and the Prince of Wales was dismissed from the council. Uneasy relations
between the prince and his father lasted until Henry IV’s death in 1413.

Henry V (1413–22)

Henry V’s brief reign is important mainly for the glorious victories in
France, which visited on his infant son the enormous and not-so-glorious
burden of governing both France and England. Two rebellions undermined
the security of the realm in the first two years of the reign. The first
was organized by Sir John Oldcastle, a Lollard and former confidant of
the king. Though Oldcastle was not arrested until 1417, little came of
his rising. Another plot gathered around Richard, 5th Earl of Cambridge,
a younger brother of the Duke of York. The aim was to place the Earl of
March on the throne, but March himself gave the plot away, and the
leading conspirators were tried and executed on the eve of the king’s
departure for France.

The French warHenry invaded France in 1415 with a small army of some 9,000 men. The
siege of Harfleur was followed by a march toward Calais. At Agincourt
the English were forced to fight because their route onward was blocked;
they won an astonishing victory. Between 1417 and 1419 Henry followed up
this success with the conquest of Normandy and the grant of Norman lands
to English nobles and lesser men. This was a new strategy for the
English to adopt, replacing the plundering raids of the past. In 1420 in
the Treaty of Troyes it was agreed that Henry would marry Catherine,
Charles VI’s daughter. He was to be heir to the French throne, and that
throne was to descend to his heirs in perpetuity. But Charles VI’s son,
the Dauphin, was not a party to the treaty, and so the war continued.
Henry, still wanting money but reluctant to ask for subsidies at a time
when he needed all the support he could get for the treaty, obtained
forced loans. There were increasing indications of unease in England. In
1422 Henry contracted dysentery and died at the siege of Meaux in
August, leaving as his heir a son less than a year old.

Domestic affairsEngland was competently governed under Henry V. Problems of law and
order were dealt with by reviving the use of the King’s Bench as a
traveling court; central and local administration operated smoothly.
Henry proved adept at persuading men to serve him energetically for
limited rewards. Parliament, well-satisfied with the course of events in
France, gave the king all the support he needed. War finance was
efficiently managed, and although Henry died in debt, the level was a
manageable one. His was a most successful reign.

Henry VI (1422–61 and 1470–71)

Henry VI was a pious and generous man, but he lacked the attributes
needed for effective kingship. Above all he lacked political sense and
was no judge of men. Until 1437 he was a child, under the regency of a
council of nobles dominated by his uncles and his Beaufort kin. When he
was declared of age, the Beauforts were the real rulers of England. In
1445, through the initiative of the Earl (later Duke) of Suffolk, he
married Margaret of Anjou, who with Suffolk dominated the king. Finally,
in the period from 1450 to 1461 he suffered two bouts of mental illness.
During these crises Richard, 3rd Duke of York, ruled the kingdom as
protector.

Domestic rivalries and the loss of FranceIn the first period of the reign John, Duke of Bedford, proved to be as
able a commander in the French war as had his brother Henry V. But in
1429 Joan of Arc stepped forth and rallied French resistance. Bedford
died in 1435, and the Congress of Arras, an effort at a general peace
settlement, failed. When Philip of Burgundy deserted the English
alliance and came to terms with Charles VII, the conflict became a war
of attrition. By 1453 the English had lost all their overseas
possessions save Calais.

Despite the factional nature of politics, there was no breakdown at
home. The country was ruled by a magnate council with the increasingly
reluctant financial support of Parliament. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
and Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester (cardinal from 1426), were the
dominant figures. The main problem was financing the war. The bishop had
great wealth, which he increased by lending to the crown, receiving
repayment out of the customs. Divisions in the council became more acute
after 1435, with Gloucester advocating an aggressive war policy. He was,
however, discredited when his wife was accused of witchcraft in 1441.

In 1447 both Cardinal Beaufort and Gloucester died, the latter in
suspicious circumstances. The Duke of Suffolk was in the ascendant; he
had negotiated a peace with France in 1444 and arranged the king’s
marriage to Margaret of Anjou in 1445. When war was renewed in 1446, the
English position in Normandy collapsed. Becoming the scapegoat for the
English failure, Suffolk was impeached in the Parliament of March 1450.
As he was fleeing into exile, he was slain by English sailors from a
ship called the Nicholas of the Tower. Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of
Somerset, succeeded him as leader of the court party.

Cade’s rebellion Less than three months later Jack Cade, a man of obscure origins, led a
popular rebellion in southeastern England. In contrast to the rising of
1381, this was not a peasant movement; Cade’s followers included many
gentry, whose complaints were mainly about lack of government rather
than economic repression. Thus the remedies they proposed were
political, such as the resumption of royal estates that had been granted
out, the removal of corrupt councillors, and improved methods of
collecting taxes. The rebels demanded that the king accept the counsel
of Henry’s rival, the Duke of York. They executed Lord Saye and Sele,
the treasurer, and the sheriff of Kent, but the rising was soon put
down.

The beginning of the Wars of the Roses The so-called Wars of the Roses was the struggle between the Yorkist and
Lancastrian descendants of Edward III for control of the throne and of
local government. The origins of the conflict have been the subject of
much debate. It can be seen as brought about as a result of Henry VI’s
inadequacy and the opposition of his dynastic rival Richard, Duke of
York, but local feuds between magnates added a further dimension.
Because of the crown’s failure to control these disputes, they acquired
national significance. Attempts have been made to link these civil
conflicts to what is known as “bastard feudalism,” the system that
allowed magnates to retain men in their service by granting them fees
and livery and made possible the recruiting of private armies. Yet this
system can be seen as promoting stability in periods of strong rule as
well as undermining weak rule such as that of Henry VI. Many nobles
sought good government, rather than being factious, and were only forced
into war by the king’s incompetence. The outbreak of civil war in
England was indirectly linked to the failure in France, for Henry VI’s
government had suffered a disastrous loss of prestige and, with it,
authority.

The Duke of York had a claim to the throne in two lines of descent.
One was through his mother, great-granddaughter of Lionel of Antwerp,
Duke of Clarence, second surviving son of Edward III, and the other was
through his father, son of Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, fourth
surviving son of Edward III. According to feudal principles he had a
better hereditary right than anyone of the Lancastrian line. He had been
sent as royal lieutenant to Ireland in 1446, but he returned from there
with 4,000 men in 1450 to reassert his right to participate in the
king’s council and to counter Somerset’s machinations. In 1454 York was
made protector of the king, who had become insane in 1453, even though
the queen and court party had tried to disguise the king’s illness.
Early in 1455 Henry recovered his wits. During his spell of insanity his
queen had a son, Edward, which changed the balance of politics. York was
no longer the heir apparent, and the country was faced with the
prospect, should the king die, of another lengthy minority.

In 1455 York gathered forces in the north, alleging that he could not
safely attend a council called to meet at Leicester without the support
of his troops. He met the king at St. Albans. Negotiations were
unsuccessful, and in the ensuing battle York’s forces, larger than the
king’s, won a decisive victory. Somerset was slain and the king
captured. A Yorkist regime was set up, with York as constable and the
Earl of Warwick, emerging as the strong support of the Yorkist cause, as
captain of Calais. The king fell ill again in the autumn of 1455, and
York was again protector for a brief period; the king, however,
recovered early in 1456.

Hostilities were renewed in 1459. The Yorkists fled without fighting
before a royal force at Ludford Bridge, but the Lancastrians failed to
make the most of the opportunity. Demands for money, purveyances, and
commissions of array increased the burdens but not the benefits of
Lancastrian rule. The earls of Warwick and Salisbury, with York’s son
Edward, used Calais as a base from which to invade England, landing at
Sandwich in 1460. A brief battle at Northampton in July went
overwhelmingly for the Yorkists, and the king was captured. At
Parliament the Duke of York claimed the throne as heir to Richard II.
The Commons and judges refused to consider a matter so high, leaving it
to the Lords’ decision. During the fortnight of debate the Lancastrians
regrouped, and when Richard met them at Wakefield, he was defeated and
killed. Warwick, somewhat later, was defeated at St. Albans.

The Yorkist cause would have been lost if it had not been for
Richard’s son, Edward, Earl of March, who defeated the Lancastrians
first at Mortimer’s Cross and then at Towton Moor early in 1461. He was
crowned king on June 28, but dated his reign from March 4, the day the
London citizens and soldiers recognized his right as king.

Edward IV (1461–70 and 1471–83)

During the early years of his reign, from 1461 to 1470, Edward was
chiefly concerned with putting down opposition to his rule. Lancastrian
resistance in the northeast and in Wales caused problems. France and
Burgundy were also of concern because Margaret of Anjou’s chief hope of
recovering Lancastrian fortunes lay in French support; but Louis XI was
miserly in his aid. Edward’s main internal problem lay in his relations
with Warwick, who had been his chief supporter in 1461. Richard Neville,
1st (or 16th) Earl of Warwick, called “the Kingmaker,” was cousin to the
king and related to much of the English nobility. Edward, however,
refused to be dominated by him, particularly with respect to his
marriage. When the crucial moment came in Warwick’s negotiations for the
king to marry the French king’s sister-in-law, Edward disclosed his
secret marriage in 1464 to a commoner, Elizabeth Woodville. The marriage
of the king’s sister to Charles the Bold of Burgundy was a success for
the Woodvilles, for Warwick was not involved in the negotiations.
Warwick allied himself to Edward’s younger brother George, Duke of
Clarence, and ultimately, through the machinations of Louis XI, joined
forces with Margaret of Anjou, deposed Edward in 1470, and brought back
Henry VI. The old king, dressed in worn and unregal clothing, was from
time to time exhibited to the London citizens, while Warwick conducted
the government. Edward IV went into brief exile in the Netherlands. But
with the help of his brother-in-law, Charles the Bold, he recovered his
throne in the spring of 1471 after a rapid campaign with successes at
Barnet and Tewkesbury. Henry VI was put to death in the Tower, and his
son was killed in battle.

The second half of Edward’s reign, 1471–83, was a period of relative
order, peace, and security. The one event reminiscent of the politics of
the early reign was the trial of the Duke of Clarence, who was attainted
in Parliament in 1478 and put to death, reputedly by drowning in a butt
of Malmsey wine. But Edward was popular. Because his personal resources
from the duchy of York were considerable and because he agreed early in
his reign to acts of resumption whereby former royal estates were taken
back into royal hands, Edward had a large personal income and was less
in need of parliamentary grants than his predecessors had been. Thus he
levied few subsidies and called Parliament only six times. Among the few
subsidies Edward did levy were benevolences, supposedly voluntary gifts,
from his subjects primarily to defray the expenses of war. In 1475
Edward took an army to France but accepted a pension from the French
king for not fighting, thereby increasing his financial independence
still further. Councils were set up to govern in the Marches of Wales
and in the north, where Edward’s brother Richard presided efficiently.
Edward’s rule was characterized by the use of his household, its
servants, and its departments, such as the chamber. He was a pragmatic
ruler, whose greatest achievement was to restore the prestige of the
monarchy. Where he failed was to make proper provision for the
succession after his death.

Edward died in 1483, at age 40, worn out, it was said, by sexual
excesses and by debauchery. He left two sons, Edward and Richard, to the
protection of his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester. After skirmishes
with the queen’s party Richard placed both of the boys in the Tower of
London, then a royal residence as well as a prison. He proceeded to
eliminate those who opposed his function as protector and defender of
the realm and guardian to the young Edward V. Even Lord Hastings, who
had sent word to Richard of Edward IV’s death and who had warned him
against the queen’s party, was accused of treachery and was executed. On
the day after the date originally set for Edward V’s coronation the
Lords and Commons summoned to Parliament unanimously adopted a petition
requesting Richard to take over the throne. He accepted and was duly
crowned king on July 6, taking the oath in English.

Richard III (1483–85)

Richard was readily accepted no doubt because of his reputed ability and
because people feared the insecurity of a long minority. The tide began
to turn against him in October 1483, when it began to be rumoured that
he had murdered or connived at the murder of his nephews. Whether this
was true or not matters less than the fact that it was thought to be
true and that it obscured the king’s able government during his brief
reign. Legislation against benevolences and protection for English
merchants and craftsmen did little to counteract his reputation as a
treacherous friend and a wicked uncle. Rebellion failed in 1483. But in
the summer of 1485, when Henry Tudor, sole male claimant to Lancastrian
ancestry and the throne, landed at Milford Haven, Richard’s supporters
widely deserted him, and he was defeated and killed at the Battle of
Bosworth Field.

England in the 15th centuryCentral to all social change in the 15th century was change in the
economy. Although plague remained endemic in England, there was little
change in the level of population. Villein labour service largely
disappeared, to be replaced by copyhold tenure (tenure by copy of the
record of the manorial court). The period has been considered a golden
age for the English labourer, but individual prosperity varied widely.
There was a well-developed land market among peasants, some of whom
managed to rise above their neighbours and began to constitute a class
called yeomen. Large landlords entirely abandoned direct management of
their estates in favour of a leasehold system. In many cases they faced
growing arrears of rent and found it difficult to maintain their income
levels. Because many landholders solved the problem of labour shortage
by converting their holdings to sheep pasture, much land enclosure took
place. As a result a great many villages were abandoned by their
inhabitants.

Though England remained a predominantly agrarian society, significant
development and change occurred in the towns. London continued to grow,
dominating the southeast. Elsewhere the development of the woolen
industry brought major changes. Halifax and Leeds grew at the expense of
York, and the West Riding at the expense of the eastern part of
Yorkshire. Suffolk and the Cotswold region became important in the
national economy. As the cloth trade grew in importance, so did the
association of the Merchant Adventurers. The merchants of the Staple,
who had a monopoly on the export of raw wool, did less well. Italian
merchants prospered in 15th-century England, and important privileges
were accorded to the German Hanseatic merchants by Edward IV.

Culturally the 15th century was a period of sterility. Monastic
chronicles came to an end, and the writing of history declined. Thomas
Walsingham (d. c. 1422) was the last of a distinguished line of St.
Albans chroniclers. Although there were some chronicles written by
citizens of London as well as two lives of Henry V, distinguished works
of history did not come until later. Neither were there any superior
works of philosophy or theology. Reginald Pecock, an arid Scholastic
philosopher, wrote an English treatise against the Lollards and various
other works emphasizing the rational element in the Christian faith; he
was judged guilty of heresy for his pains. No noteworthy poets succeeded
Chaucer, though a considerable quantity of English poetry was written in
this period. John Lydgate produced much verse in the Lancastrian
interest. The printer William Caxton set up his press in 1476 to publish
English works for the growing reading public. The first great
collections of family correspondence, those of the Pastons, Stonors, and
Celys, survive from this period.

The 15th century, however, was an important age in the foundation of
schools and colleges. Some schools were set up as adjuncts to chantries,
some by guilds, and some by collegiate churches. Henry VI founded Eton
College in 1440 and King’s College, Cambridge, in 1441. Other colleges
at Oxford and Cambridge were also founded in this period. The Inns of
Court expanded their membership and systematized their teaching of law.
Many gentlemen’s sons became members of the Inns, though not necessarily
lawyers: they needed the rudiments of law to be able to defend and
extend their estates. The influence of the Italian Renaissance in
learning and culture was very limited before 1485, although there were
some notable patrons, such as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who
collected books and supported scholars interested in the new learning.

Only in architecture did England show great originality. Large
churches were built in English Perpendicular style, especially in
regions made rich by the woolen industry. The tomb of Richard Beauchamp
at Warwick and King’s College Chapel in Cambridge show the quality of
English architecture and sculpture in the period.

Margaret Hastings
Michael Charles Prestwich

England under the Tudors

Henry VII (1485–1509)

When Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, seized the throne on Aug. 22, 1485,
leaving the Yorkist Richard III dead upon the field of battle, few
Englishmen would have predicted that 118 years of Tudor rule had begun.
Six sovereigns had come and gone, and at least 15 major battles had been
fought between rival contenders to the throne since that moment in 1399
when the divinity that “doth hedge a king” was violated and Richard II
was forced to abdicate. Simple arithmetic forecast that Henry VII would
last no more than a decade and that the Battle of Bosworth Field was
nothing more than another of the erratic swings of the military pendulum
in the struggle between the house of York and the house of Lancaster.
What gave Henry Tudor victory in 1485 was not so much personal charisma
as the fact that key noblemen deserted Richard III at the moment of his
greatest need, that Thomas Stanley (2nd Baron Stanley) and his brother
Sir William stood aside during most of the battle in order to be on the
winning team, and that Louis XI of France supplied the Lancastrian
forces with 1,000 mercenary troops.

The desperateness of the new monarch’s gamble was equalled only by
the doubtfulness of his claim. Henry VII’s Lancastrian blood was tainted
by bastardy twice over. He was descended on his mother’s side from the
Beaufort family, the offspring of John of Gaunt and his mistress
Katherine Swynford, and, though their children had been legitimized by
act of Parliament, they had been specifically barred from the
succession. His father’s genealogy was equally suspect: Edmund Tudor,
earl of Richmond, was born to Catherine of Valois, widowed queen of
Henry V, by her clerk of the wardrobe, Owen Tudor, and the precise
marital status of their relationship has never been established. Had
quality of Plantagenet blood, not military conquest, been the essential
condition of monarchy, Edward, earl of Warwick, the 10-year-old nephew
of Edward IV, would have sat upon the throne. Might, not soiled right,
had won out on the high ground at Bosworth Field, and Henry VII claimed
his title by conquest. The new king wisely sought to fortify his
doubtful genealogical pretension, however, first by parliamentary
acclamation and then by royal marriage. The Parliament of November 1485
did not confer regal power on the first Tudor monarch—victory in war had
already done that—but it did acknowledge Henry as “our new sovereign
lord.” Then, on Jan. 18, 1486, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, the
eldest daughter of Edward IV, thereby uniting “the white rose and the
red” and launching England upon a century of “smooth-fac’d peace with
smiling plenty.”

“God’s fair ordinance,” which Shakespeare and later generations so
clearly observed in the events of 1485–86, was not limited to military
victory, parliamentary sanction, and a fruitful marriage; the hidden
hand of economic, social, and intellectual change was also on Henry’s
side. The day was coming when the successful prince would be more
praised than the heroic monarch and the solvent sovereign more admired
than the pious one. Henry Tudor was probably no better or worse than the
first Lancastrian, Henry IV; they both worked diligently at their royal
craft and had to fight hard to keep their crowns, but the seventh Henry
achieved what the fourth had not—a secure and permanent dynasty—because
England in 1485 was moving into a period of unprecedented economic
growth and social change.

Economy and societyBy 1485 the kingdom had begun to recover from the demographic
catastrophe of the Black Death and the agricultural depression of the
late 14th century. As the 15th century came to a close, the rate of
population growth began to increase and continued to rise throughout the
following century. The population, which in 1400 may have dropped as low
as 2.5 million, had by 1600 grown to about 4 million. More people meant
more mouths to feed, more backs to cover, and more vanity to satisfy. In
response, yeoman farmers, gentleman sheep growers, urban cloth
manufacturers, and merchant adventurers produced a social and economic
revolution. With extraordinary speed, the export of raw wool gave way to
the export of woolen cloth manufactured at home, and the wool clothier
or entrepreneur was soon buying fleece from sheep raisers, transporting
the wool to cottagers for spinning and weaving, paying the farmer’s wife
and children by the piece, and collecting the finished article for
shipment to Bristol, London, and eventually Europe. By the time Henry
VII seized the throne, the Merchant Adventurers, an association of
London cloth exporters, were controlling the London-Antwerp market. By
1496 they were a chartered organization with a legal monopoly of the
woolen cloth trade, and, largely as a consequence of their political and
international importance, Henry successfully negotiated the Intercursus
Magnus, a highly favourable commercial treaty between England and the
Low Countries.

As landlords increased the size of their flocks to the point that
ruminants outnumbered human beings 3 to 1 and as clothiers grew rich on
the wool trade, inflation injected new life into the economy. England
was caught up in a vast European spiral of rising prices, declining real
wages, and cheap money. Between 1500 and 1540, prices in England
doubled, and they doubled again in the next generation. In 1450 the cost
of wheat was what it had been in 1300; by 1550 it had tripled.
Contemporaries blamed inflation on human greed and only slowly began to
perceive that rising prices were the result of inflationary pressures
brought on by the increase in population, international war, and the
flood of gold and silver arriving from the New World.

Inflation and the wool trade together created an economic and social
upheaval. A surfeit of land, a labour shortage, low rents, and high
wages, which had prevailed throughout the early 15th century as a
consequence of economic depression and reduced population, were replaced
by a land shortage, a labour surplus, high rents, and declining wages.
The landlord, who a century before could find neither tenants nor
labourers for his land and had left his fields fallow, could now convert
his meadows into sheep runs. His rents and profits soared; his need for
labour declined, for one shepherd and his dog could do the work of half
a dozen men who had previously tilled the same field. Slowly the
medieval system of land tenure and communal farming broke down. The
common land of the manor was divided up and fenced in, and the peasant
farmer who held his tenure either by copy (a document recorded in the
manor court) or by unwritten custom was evicted.

The total extent of enclosure and eviction is difficult to assess,
but, between 1455 and 1607, in 34 counties more than 500,000 acres
(200,000 hectares), or about 2.75 percent of the total, were enclosed,
and some 50,000 persons were forced off the land. Statistics, however,
are deceptive regarding both the emotional impact and the extent of
change. The most disturbing aspect of the land revolution was not the
emergence of a vagrant and unemployable labour force for whom society
felt no social responsibility but an unprecedented increase in what men
feared most—change. Farming techniques were transformed, the gap between
rich and poor increased, the timeless quality of village life was upset,
and, on all levels of society, old families were being replaced by new.

The beneficiaries of change, as always, were the most grasping, the
most ruthless, and the best educated segments of the population: the
landed country gentlemen and their socially inferior cousins, the
merchants and lawyers. By 1500 the essential economic basis for the
landed country gentleman’s future political and social ascendancy was
being formed: the 15th-century knight of the shire was changing from a
desperate and irresponsible land proprietor, ready to support the
baronial feuding of the Wars of the Roses, into a respectable landowner
desiring strong, practical government and the rule of law. The gentry
did not care whether Henry VII’s royal pedigree could bear close
inspection; their own lineage was not above suspicion, and they were
willing to serve the prince “in parliament, in council, in commission
and other offices of the commonwealth.”

Dynastic threatsIt is no longer fashionable to call Henry VII a “new monarch,” and,
indeed, if the first Tudor had a model for reconstructing the monarchy,
it was the example of the great medieval kings. Newness, however, should
not be totally denied Henry Tudor; his royal blood was very “new,” and
the extraordinary efficiency of his regime introduced a spirit into
government that had rarely been present in the medieval past. It was, in
fact, “newness” that governed the early policy of the reign, for the
Tudor dynasty had to be secured and all those with a better or older
claim to the throne liquidated. Elizabeth of York was deftly handled by
marriage; the sons of Edward IV had already been removed from the list,
presumably murdered by their uncle Richard III; and Richard’s nephew
Edward Plantagenet, the young earl of Warwick, was promptly imprisoned.
But the descendants of Edward IV’s sister and daughters remained a
threat to the new government. Equally dangerous was the persistent myth
that the younger of the two princes murdered in the Tower of London had
escaped his assassin and that the earl of Warwick had escaped his
jailers.

The existence of pretenders acted as a catalyst for further baronial
discontent and Yorkist aspirations, and in 1487 John de la Pole, a
nephew of Edward IV by his sister Elizabeth, with the support of 2,000
mercenary troops paid for with Burgundian gold, landed in England to
support the pretensions of Lambert Simnel, who passed himself off as the
authentic earl of Warwick. Again Henry Tudor was triumphant in war; at
the Battle of Stoke, de la Pole was killed and Simnel captured and
demoted to a scullery boy in the royal kitchen. Ten years later Henry
had to do it all over again, this time with a handsome Flemish lad named
Perkin Warbeck, who for six years was accepted in Yorkist circles in
Europe as the real Richard IV, brother of the murdered Edward V. Warbeck
tried to take advantage of Cornish anger against heavy royal taxation
and increased government efficiency and sought to lead a Cornish army of
social malcontents against the Tudor throne. It was a measure of the new
vigour and popularity of the Tudor monarchy, as well as the support of
the gentry, that social revolution and further dynastic war were total
failures, and Warbeck found himself in the Tower along with the earl of
Warwick. In the end both men proved too dangerous to live, even in
captivity, and in 1499 they were executed.

The policy of dynastic extermination did not cease with the new
century. Under Henry VIII, the duke of Buckingham (who was descended
from the youngest son of Edward III) was killed in 1521; the earl of
Warwick’s sister, the countess of Salisbury, was beheaded in 1541 and
her descendants harried out of the land; and in January 1547 the poet
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, the grandson of Buckingham, was put to
death. By the end of Henry VIII’s reign, the job had been so well done
that the curse of Edward III’s fecundity had been replaced by the
opposite problem: the Tudor line proved to be infertile when it came to
producing healthy male heirs. Henry VII sired Arthur, who died in 1502,
and Henry VIII in turn produced only one legitimate son, Edward VI, who
died at the age of 16, thereby ending the direct male descent.

Financial policyIt was not enough for Henry VII to secure his dynasty; he also had to
reestablish the financial credit of his crown and reassert the authority
of royal law. Medieval kings had traditionally lived off four sources of
nonparliamentary income: rents from the royal estates, revenues from
import and export taxes, fees from the administration of justice, and
feudal moneys extracted on the basis of a vassal’s duty to his overlord.
The first Tudor was no different from his Yorkist or medieval
predecessors; he was simply more ruthless and successful in demanding
every penny that was owed him. Henry’s first move was to confiscate all
the estates of Yorkist adherents and to restore all property over which
the crown had lost control since 1455 (in some cases as far back as
1377). To these essentially statutory steps he added efficiency of rent
collection. In 1485 income from crown lands had totalled £29,000; by
1509 annual land revenues had risen to £42,000, and the profits from the
duchy of Lancaster had jumped from £650 to £6,500. At the same time, the
Tudors profited from the growing economic prosperity of the realm, and
annual customs receipts rose from more than £20,000 to an average of
£40,000 by the time Henry died.

The increase in customs and land revenues was applauded, for it meant
fewer parliamentary subsidies and fit the medieval formula that kings
should live on their own, not parliamentary, income. But the collection
of revenues from feudal and prerogative sources and from the
administration of justice caused great discontent and earned Henry his
reputation as a miser and extortionist. Generally, Henry demanded no
more than his due as the highest feudal overlord, and, a year after he
became sovereign, he established a commission to look into land tenure
to discover who held property by knight’s fee—that is, by obligation to
perform military services. Occasionally he overstepped the bounds of
feudal decency and abused his rights. In 1504, for instance, he levied a
feudal aid (tax) to pay for the knighting of his son—who had been
knighted 15 years before and had been dead for two. Henry VIII continued
his father’s policy of fiscal feudalism, forcing through Parliament in
1536 the Statute of Uses—to prevent any landowner from escaping “relief”
and wardship (feudal inheritance taxes) by settling the ownership of his
lands in a trustee for the sole benefit (“use”) of himself—and
establishing the Court of Wards and Liveries in 1540 to handle the
profits of feudal wardship. The howl of protest was so great that in
1540 Henry VIII had to compromise, and by the Statute of Wills a subject
who held his property by knight’s fee was permitted to bequeath
two-thirds of his land without feudal obligation.

To fiscal feudalism Henry VII added rigorous administration of
justice. As law became more effective, it also became more profitable,
and the policy of levying heavy fines as punishment upon those who dared
break the king’s peace proved to be a useful whip over the mighty
magnate and a welcome addition to the king’s exchequer. Even war and
diplomacy were sources of revenue; one of the major reasons Henry VII
wanted his second son, Henry, to marry his brother’s widow was that the
king was reluctant to return the dowry of 200,000 crowns that Ferdinand
and Isabella of Spain had given for the marriage of their daughter
Catherine of Aragon. Generally, Henry believed in a good-neighbour
policy—apparent in his alliance with Spain by the marriage of Arthur and
Catherine in 1501 and peace with Scotland by the marriage of his
daughter Margaret to James IV in 1503—on the grounds that peace was
cheap and trade profitable. In 1489, however, he was faced with the
threat of the union of the duchy of Brittany with the French crown; and
England, Spain, the empire, and Burgundy went to war to stop it.
Nevertheless, as soon as it became clear that nothing could prevent
France from absorbing the duchy, Henry negotiated the unheroic but
financially rewarding Treaty of Étaples in 1492, whereby he disclaimed
all historic rights to French territory (except Calais) in return for an
indemnity of £159,000. By fair means or foul, when the first Tudor died,
his total nonparliamentary annual income had risen at least twofold and
stood in the neighbourhood of £113,000 (some estimates put it as high as
£142,000). From land alone the king received £42,000, while the greatest
landlord in the realm had to make do with less than £5,000; economically
speaking, there were no longer any overmighty magnates.

The administration of justiceMoney could buy power, but respect could only be won by law enforcement.
The problem for Henry VII was not to replace an old system of government
with a new one—no Tudor was consciously a revolutionary—but to make the
ancient system work tolerably well. He had to tame but not destroy the
nobility, develop organs of administration directly under his control,
and wipe out provincialism and privilege wherever they appeared. In the
task of curbing the old nobility, the king was immeasurably helped by
the high aristocratic death rate during the Wars of the Roses; but where
war left off, policy took over. Commissions of Array composed of local
notables were appointed by the crown for each county in order to make
use of the power of the aristocracy in raising troops but to prevent
them from maintaining private armies (livery) with which to intimidate
justice (maintenance) or threaten the throne.

Previous monarchs had sought to enforce the laws against livery and
maintenance, but the first two Tudors, though they never totally
abolished such evils, built up a reasonably efficient machine for
enforcing the law, based on the historic premise that the king in the
midst of his council was the fountain of justice. Traditionally, the
royal council had heard all sorts of cases, and its members rapidly
began to specialize. The Court of Chancery had for years dealt with
civil offenses, and the Court of Star Chamber evolved to handle alleged
corruption of justice (intimidation of witnesses and jurors, bribing of
judges, etc.), the Court of Requests poor men’s suits, and the High
Court of Admiralty piracy. The process by which the conciliar courts
developed was largely accidental, and the Court of Star Chamber acquired
its name from the star-painted ceiling of the room in which the
councillors sat, not from the statute of 1487 that recognized its
existence. Conciliar justice was popular because the ordinary courts
where common law prevailed were slow, cumbersome, and more costly;
favoured the rich and mighty; and tended to break down when asked to
deal with riot, maintenance, livery, perjury, and fraud. The same search
for efficiency applied to matters of finance. The traditional fiscal
agency of the crown, the exchequer, was burdened with archaic procedures
and restrictions, and Henry VII turned to the more intimate and flexible
departments of his personal household—specifically to the treasurer of
the chamber, whom he could supervise directly—as the central
tax-raising, rent-collecting, and money-disbursing segment of
government.

The Tudors sought to enforce law in every corner of their kingdom,
and step by step the blurred medieval profile of a realm shattered by
semiautonomous franchises, in which local law and custom were obeyed
more than the king’s law, was transformed into the clear outline of a
single state filled with loyal subjects obeying the king’s decrees. By
1500 royal government had been extended into the northern counties and
Wales by the creation of the Council of the North and the Council for
the Welsh Marches. The Welsh principalities had always been difficult to
control, and it was not until 1536 that Henry VIII brought royal law
directly into Wales and incorporated the 136 self-governing lordships
into a greater England with five new shires.

If the term new monarchy was inappropriate in 1485, the same cannot
be said for the year of Henry VII’s death, for when he died in 1509,
after 24 years of reign, he bequeathed to his son something quite new in
English history: a safe throne, a solvent government, a prosperous land,
and a reasonably united kingdom. Only one vital aspect of the past
remained untouched, the semi-independent Roman Catholic Church, and it
was left to the second Tudor to challenge its authority and plunder its
wealth.

Henry VIII (1509–47)

Cardinal WolseyAn 18-year-old prince inherited his father’s throne, but the son of an
Ipswich butcher carried on the first Tudor’s administrative policies.
While the young sovereign enjoyed his inheritance, Thomas Wolsey
collected titles—archbishop of York in 1514, lord chancellor and
cardinal legate in 1515, and papal legate for life in 1524. He exercised
a degree of power never before wielded by king or minister, for, as lord
chancellor and cardinal legate, he united in his portly person the
authority of church and state. He sought to tame both the lords temporal
and the lords spiritual—administering to the nobility the “new law of
the Star Chamber,” protecting the rights of the underprivileged in the
poor men’s Court of Requests, and teaching the abbots and bishops that
they were subjects as well as ecclesiastical princes. Long before Henry
assumed full power over his subjects’ souls as well as their bodies, his
servant had marked the way. The cardinal’s administration, however, was
stronger on promise than on performance, and, for all his fine qualities
and many talents, he exposed himself to the accusation that he
prostituted policy for pecuniary gain and personal pride.

Together, the king and cardinal plunged the kingdom into
international politics and war and helped to make England one of the
centres of Renaissance learning and brilliance. But the sovereign and
his chief servant overestimated England’s international position in the
Continental struggle between Francis I of France and the Holy Roman
emperor Charles V. Militarily, the kingdom was of the same magnitude as
the papacy—the English king had about the same revenues and could field
an army about the same size—and, as one contemporary noted, England,
with its back door constantly exposed to Scotland and its economy
dependent upon the Flanders wool trade, was a mere “morsel among those
choppers” of Europe. Nevertheless, Wolsey’s diplomacy was based on the
expectation that England could swing the balance of power either to
France or to the empire and, by holding that position, could maintain
the peace of Europe. The hollowness of the cardinal’s policy was
revealed in 1525 when Charles disastrously defeated and captured Francis
at the Battle of Pavia. Italy was overrun with the emperor’s troops, the
pope became an imperial chaplain, all of Europe bowed before the
conqueror, and England sank from being the fulcrum of Continental
diplomacy to the level of a second-rate power just at the moment when
Henry had decided to rid himself of his wife, the 42-year-old Catherine
of Aragon.

The king’s “Great Matter”It is still a subject of debate whether Henry’s decision to seek an
annulment of his marriage and wed Anne Boleyn was a matter of state, of
love, or of conscience; quite possibly all three operated. Catherine was
fat, seven years her husband’s senior, and incapable of bearing further
children. Anne was everything that the queen was not—pretty, vivacious,
and fruitful. Catherine had produced only one child that lived past
infancy, a girl, Princess Mary (later Mary I); it seemed ironic indeed
that the first Tudor should have solved the question of the succession
only to expose the kingdom to what was perceived as an even greater
peril in the second generation: a female ruler. The need for a male heir
was paramount, for the last queen of England, Matilda, in the 12th
century, had been a disaster, and there was no reason to believe that
another would be any better. Finally, there was the question of the
king’s conscience. Henry had married his brother’s widow, and, though
the pope had granted a dispensation, the fact of the matter remained
that every male child born to Henry and Catherine had died, proof of
what was clearly written in the Bible: “If a man takes his brother’s
wife, it is impurity; he has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they
shall be childless” (Leviticus 20:21).

Unfortunately, Henry’s annulment was not destined to stand or fall
upon the theological issue of whether a papal dispensation could set
aside such a prohibition, for Catherine was not simply the king’s wife;
she was also the aunt of the emperor Charles V, the most powerful
sovereign in Europe. Both Henry and his cardinal knew that the annulment
would never be granted unless the emperor’s power in Italy could be
overthrown by an Anglo-French military alliance and the pope rescued
from imperial domination, and for three years Wolsey worked desperately
to achieve this diplomatic and military end. Caught between an
all-powerful emperor and a truculent English king, Pope Clement VII
procrastinated and offered all sorts of doubtful solutions short of
annulment, including the marriage of Princess Mary and the king’s
illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond; the legitimizing of
all children begotten of Anne Boleyn; and the transfer of Catherine into
a nunnery so that the king could be given permission to remarry.
Wolsey’s purpose was to have the marriage annulled and the trial held in
London. But in 1529, despite the arrival of Lorenzo Cardinal Campeggio
to set up the machinery for a hearing, Wolsey’s plans exploded. In July
the pope ordered Campeggio to move the case to Rome, where a decision
against the king was a foregone conclusion, and in August Francis and
the emperor made peace at the Treaty of Cambrai. Wolsey’s policies were
a failure, and he was dismissed from office in October 1529. He died on
November 29, just in time to escape trial for treason.

The Reformation backgroundHenry now began groping for new means to achieve his purpose. At first
he contemplated little more than blackmail to frighten the pope into
submission. But slowly, reluctantly, and not realizing the full
consequences of his actions, he moved step by step to open defiance and
a total break with Rome. Wolsey, in his person and his policies, had
represented the past. He was the last of the great ecclesiastical
statesmen who had been as much at home in the cosmopolitan world of
European Christendom, with its spiritual centre in Rome, as in a
provincial capital such as London. By the time of Henry’s matrimonial
crisis, Christendom was dissolving. Not only were late medieval kingdoms
assuming the character of independent nation-states, but the spiritual
unity of Christ’s seamless cloak was also being torn apart by heresy.
Henry possibly would never have won his annulment had there not existed
in England men who desired a break with Rome, not because it was
dynastically expedient but because they regarded the pope as the “whore
of Babylon.”

The religious life of the people was especially vibrant in the early
decades of the 16th century, and, although there were numerous
vociferous critics of clerical standards and behaviour, the
institutional church was generally in good heart. Only during the
extraordinary period in the 12th and 13th centuries, when money was
being poured into the creation of parishes and the building of several
thousand parish churches and 19 great cathedrals, was more spent on
religion than in the decades between the arrival of the Tudors and the
Reformation. And now it was not just great landowners but the people in
general who poured money into their churches. Perhaps one in three
parish churches underwent major refurbishments in this period. Hundreds
of elaborate chantry chapels and altars were erected, money invested in
parish guilds doubled (for the benefit of the living in the form of
pensions and doles and for the benefit of the dead in the form of
masses), and the number of those seeking ordination reached a new peak.
In Bedfordshire at least charitable giving was highly selective; some
religious orders were much more favoured than others. There is also some
evidence that the monastic life and the endowment of monasteries were
slowing down, but in essence the church was successfully meeting the
spiritual needs of huge numbers of people.

Precisely because of the religiosity of the people, there was a
growing volume of complaint about clerical absenteeism and pluralism in
general and about the unavailability of the bishops in particular. Many
prelates served as the top civil servants of the crown rather than as
shepherds of Christ’s flock. And as inflation began to take off, so did
attempts by clerics to maximize their incomes by a rather ruthless
determination to collect everything to which they were entitled—such as
the “best beasts” demanded as mortuary fees from grieving and
impoverished parents of dead children. Spasmodic persecution had failed
to eradicate the Lollard legacy of John Wycliffe in substantial pockets
of southern England, and the infiltration of Lutheran books and of
printed Bibles opened the eyes of some among the learned and among those
who traded with the Baltic states and the Low Countries to the
possibility of alternative ways of encountering God. The powerful force
of the “Word” took hold of some and made the mumbling of prayers, the
billowing of incense, and the selling of indulgences to rescue souls
from the due penalty of their sins seem the stuff of idolatry and not of
true worship. But in 1532, when Henry VIII began to contemplate a schism
from Rome, embracing Protestantism was the last thing on his mind, and
very few of his subjects would have wished him to do so.

The break with RomeWith Wolsey and his papal authority gone, Henry turned to the authority
of the state to obtain his annulment. The so-called Reformation
Parliament that first met in November 1529 was unprecedented; it lasted
seven years, enacted 137 statutes (32 of which were of vital
importance), and legislated in areas that no medieval Parliament had
ever dreamed of entering. “King in Parliament” became the revolutionary
instrument by which the medieval church was destroyed.

The first step was to intimidate the church, and in 1531 the
representatives of the clergy who were gathered in Convocation were
forced under threat of praemunire (a statute prohibiting the operation
of the legal and financial jurisdiction of the pope without royal
consent) to grant Henry a gift of £119,000 and to acknowledge him
supreme head of the church “as far as the law of Christ allows.” Then
the government struck at the papacy, threatening to cut off its
revenues; the Annates Statute of 1532 empowered Henry, if he saw fit, to
abolish payment to Rome of the first year’s income of all newly
installed bishops. The implied threat had little effect on the pope, and
time was running out, for by December 1532 Anne Boleyn was pregnant, and
on Jan. 25, 1533, she was secretly married to Henry. If the king was to
be saved from bigamy and if his child was to be born in holy wedlock, he
had less than eight months to get rid of Catherine of Aragon. Archbishop
William Warham had conveniently died in August 1532, and in March 1533 a
demoralized and frightened pontiff sanctioned the installation of Thomas
Cranmer as primate of the English church.

Cranmer was a friend of the annulment, but, before he could oblige
his sovereign, the queen’s right of appeal from the archbishop’s court
to Rome had to be destroyed; this could be done only by cutting the
constitutional cords holding England to the papacy. Consequently, in
April 1533 the crucial statute was enacted; the Act of Restraint of
Appeals boldly decreed that “this realm of England is an empire.” A
month later an obliging archbishop heard the case and adjudged the
king’s marriage to be null and void. On June 1 Anne was crowned rightful
queen of England, and three months and a week later, on Sept. 7, 1533,
the royal child was born. To “the great shame and confusion” of
astrologers, it turned out to be Elizabeth Tudor (later Elizabeth I).

Henry was mortified; he had risked his soul and his crown for yet
another girl. But Anne had proved her fertility, and it was hoped that a
male heir would shortly follow. In the meantime it was necessary to
complete the break with Rome and rebuild the Church of England. By the
Act of Succession of March 1534, subjects were ordered to accept the
king’s marriage to Anne as “undoubted, true, sincere and perfect.” A
second Statute “in Restraint of Annates” severed most of the financial
ties with Rome, and in November the constitutional revolution was
solemnized in the Act of Supremacy, which announced that Henry Tudor was
and always had been “Supreme Head of the Church of England”; not even
the qualifying phrase “as far as the law of Christ allows” was retained.

The consolidation of the ReformationThe medieval tenet that church and state were separate entities with
divine law standing higher than human law had been legislated out of
existence; the new English church was in effect a department of the
Tudor state. The destruction of the Roman Catholic Church led inevitably
to the dissolution of the monasteries. As monastic religious fervour and
economic resources had already begun to dry up, it was easy enough for
the government to build a case that monasteries were centres of vice and
corruption. In the end, however, what destroyed them was neither apathy
nor abuse but the fact that they were contradictions within a national
church, for religious foundations by definition were international,
supranational organizations that traditionally supported papal
authority.

Though the monasteries bowed to the royal supremacy, the government
continued to view them with suspicion, arguing that they had obeyed only
out of fear, and their destruction got under way early in 1536. In the
name of fiscal reform and efficiency, foundations with endowments of
under £200 a year (nearly 400 of them) were dissolved on the grounds
that they were too small to do their job effectively. By late 1536
confiscation had become state policy, for the Pilgrimage of Grace, a
Roman Catholic-inspired uprising in the north, which appeared to the
government to have received significant support from monastic clergy,
seemed to be clear evidence that all monasteries were potential nests of
traitors. By 1539 the foundations, both great and small, were gone.
Moreover, property constituting at least 13 percent of the land of
England and Wales was nationalized and incorporated into the crown
lands, thereby almost doubling the government’s normal peacetime,
nonparliamentary income.

Had those estates remained in the possession of the crown, English
history might have been very different, for the kings of England would
have been able to rule without calling upon Parliament, and the
constitutional authority that evolved out of the crown’s fiscal
dependence on Parliament would never have developed. For better or for
worse, Henry and his descendants had to sell the profits of the
Reformation, and by 1603 three-fourths of the monastic loot had passed
into the hands of the landed gentry. The legend of a “golden shower” is
false; monastic property was never given away at bargain prices, nor was
it consciously presented to the kingdom in order to win the support of
the ruling elite. Instead, most—though not all—of the land was sold at
its fair market value to pay for Henry’s wars and foreign policy. The
effect, however, was crucial: the most powerful elements within Tudor
society now had a vested interest in protecting their property against
papal Catholicism.

The marriage to Anne, the break with Rome, and even the destruction
of the monasteries went through with surprisingly little opposition. It
had been foreseen that the royal supremacy might have to be enacted in
blood, and the Act of Supremacy (March 1534) and the Act of Treason
(December 1534) were designed to root out and liquidate the dissent. The
former was a loyalty test requiring subjects to take an oath swearing to
accept not only the matrimonial results of the break with Rome but also
the principles on which it stood; the latter extended the meaning of
treason to include all those who did “maliciously wish, will or desire,
by words or writing or by craft imagine” the king’s death or slandered
his marriage. Sir Thomas More (who had succeeded Wolsey as lord
chancellor), Bishop John Fisher (who almost alone among the episcopate
had defended Catherine during her trial), and a handful of monks
suffered death for their refusal to accept the concept of a national
church. Even the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536–37 was a short-lived
eruption. The uprisings in Lincolnshire in October and in Yorkshire
during the winter were without doubt religiously motivated, but they
were also as much feudal and social rebellions as revolts in support of
Rome. Peasants, landed country gentlemen, and barons with traditional
values united in defense of the monasteries and the old religion, and
for a moment the rebels seemed on the verge of toppling the Tudor state.
The nobility were angered that they had been excluded from the king’s
government by men of inferior social status, and they resented the
encroachment of bureaucracy into the northern shires. The gentry were
concerned by rising taxes and the peasants by threatened enclosure. But
the three elements had little in common outside religion, and the
uprisings fell apart from within. The rebels were soon crushed and their
leaders—including Robert Aske, a charismatic Yorkshire country
attorney—were brutally executed. The Reformation came to England
piecemeal, which goes far to explain the government’s success. Had the
drift toward Protestantism, the royal supremacy, and the destruction of
the monasteries come as a single religious revolution, it would have
produced a violent reaction. As it was, the Roman Catholic opposition
could always argue that each step along the way to Reformation would be
the last.

The expansion of the English stateThe decade of Reformation led to a transformation in the operations of
Tudor government. Not only were new revenue courts created to handle all
the wealth of the monasteries, but problems of dynastic and national
security required a much more hands-on royal control of provincial
affairs. In and through the English Parliament, Henry incorporated the
principality of Wales and the marcher lordships (previously independent
of the crown’s direct control) into the English legal and administrative
system. In the process, he not only shired the whole of Wales, granted
seats in the English Parliament to the Welsh shires and boroughs, and
extended the jurisdiction of the common-law courts and judges to Wales,
but he also insisted that legal processes be conducted in English. The
palatinates of the north were similarly incorporated, and all those
grants by which royal justice was franchised out to private individuals
and groups were revoked. For the first time the king’s writ and the
king’s justice were ubiquitous in England.

In 1541 the Irish Parliament, which represented only the area around
Dublin known as the Pale, passed an act creating the Kingdom of Ireland
and declared it a perpetual appendage of the English crown. Now, for the
first time in 300 years, the king set out to make good his claim to
jurisdiction over the whole island. English viceroys sought to impose
English law, English inheritance customs, English social norms, and the
English religious settlement upon all the people there. In an attempt to
achieve this in a peaceful and piecemeal way, the Anglo-Irish lords and
the heads of Gaelic clans were invited to surrender their lands and
titles to the crown on the promise of their regrant on favourable terms.
Thus began a century of wheedling and cajoling, of rebellion and
confiscation, of accommodation and plantation, that was to be a constant
drain on the English Exchequer and a constant source of tragedy for the
native people of Ireland.

Henry VIII did not seek to incorporate Scotland into his imperium.
Though he tried to keep his nephew James V, then king of Scotland,
“on-side” during his feud with Rome and never forgot that on 23 previous
occasions Scottish kings had sworn feudal obeisance to kings of England,
Henry never laid claim to the Scottish throne.

Henry’s last yearsHenry was so securely seated upon his throne that the French ambassador
announced that he was more an idol to be worshipped than a king to be
obeyed. The king successfully survived four more matrimonial
experiments, the enmity of every major power in Europe, and an
international war. On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn’s career was terminated
by the executioner’s ax. She had failed in her promise to produce
further children to secure the succession. Her enemies poisoned the
king’s mind against her with accusations of multiple adulteries. The
king’s love turned to hatred, but what sealed the queen’s fate was
probably the death of her rival, Catherine of Aragon, on Jan. 8, 1536.
From that moment it was clear that, should Henry again marry, whoever
was his wife, the children she might bear would be legitimate in the
eyes of Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. How much policy, how much
revulsion for Anne, and how much attraction for Jane Seymour played in
the final tragedy is beyond analysis, but 11 days after Anne’s execution
Henry married Jane. Sixteen months later the future Edward VI was born.
Jane died as a consequence, but Henry finally had what it had taken a
revolution to achieve—a legitimate male heir.

Henry married thrice more, once for reasons of diplomacy, once for
love, and once for peace and quiet. Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife, was
the product of Reformation international politics. For a time in 1539 it
looked as if Charles V and Francis would come to terms and unite against
the schismatic king of England, and the only allies Henry possessed were
the Lutheran princes of Germany. In something close to panic he was
stampeded into marriage with Anne of Cleves. But the following year, the
moment the diplomatic scene changed, he dropped both his wife and the
man who had engineered the marriage, his vicar-general in matters
spiritual, Thomas Cromwell. Anne was divorced July 12, Cromwell was
executed July 28, and Henry married Catherine Howard the same day. The
second Catherine did not do as well as her cousin, the first Anne; she
lasted only 18 months. Catherine proved to be neither a virgin before
her wedding nor a particularly faithful damsel after her marriage. With
the execution of his fifth wife, Henry turned into a sick old man, and
he took as his last spouse Catherine Parr, who was as much a nursemaid
as a wife. During those final years the king’s interests turned to
international affairs. Henry’s last wars (1543–46) were fought not to
defend his church against resurgent European Catholicism but to renew
much older policies of military conquest in France and Scotland. Though
he enlarged the English Pale at Calais by seizing the small French port
of Boulogne and though his armies crushed the Scots at the Battles of
Solway Moss (1542) and Pinkie (1547) and ravaged much of Lowland
Scotland during the “Rough Wooing,” the wars had no lasting diplomatic
or international effects except to assure that the monastic lands would
pass into the hands of the gentry.

By the time Henry died (Jan. 28, 1547), medievalism had nearly
vanished. The crown stood at the pinnacle of its power, able to demand
and receive a degree of obedience from both great and small that no
medieval monarch had been able to achieve. The measure of that authority
was threefold: (1) the extent to which Henry had been able to thrust a
very unpopular annulment and supremacy legislation down the throat of
Parliament, (2) his success in raising unprecedented sums of money
through taxation, and (3) his ability to establish a new church on the
ashes of the old. It is difficult to say whether these feats were the
work of the king or his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. The will was
probably Henry’s and the parliamentary means his minister’s, but,
whoever was responsible, by 1547 England had come a long way on the road
of Reformation. The crown had assumed the authority of the papacy
without as yet fundamentally changing the old creed, but the ancient
structure was severely shaken. Throughout England men were arguing that
because the pontiff had been proved false, the entire Roman Catholic
creed was suspect, and the cry went up to “get rid of the poison with
the author.” It was not long before every aspect of Roman Catholicism
was under attack—the miracle of the mass whereby the bread and wine are
transformed into the glorified body and blood of Christ (see
transubstantiation), the doctrine of purgatory, the efficacy of saints
and images, the concept of an ordained priesthood with the power to
mediate grace through the sacraments, the discipline of priestly
celibacy, and so on. The time had come for Parliament and the supreme
head to decide what constituted the “true” faith for Englishmen.

Henry never worked out a consistent religious policy: the Ten
Articles of 1536 and the Bishop’s Book of the following year tended to
be somewhat Lutheran in tone; the Six Articles of 1539, or the Act for
Abolishing Diversity of Opinion, and the King’s Book of 1543 were mildly
Roman Catholic. Whatever the religious colouring, Henry’s ecclesiastical
via media was based on obedience to an authoritarian old king and on
subjects who were expected to live “soberly, justly and devoutly.”
Unfortunately for the religious, social, and political peace of the
kingdom, both these conditions disappeared the moment Henry died and a
nine-year-old boy sat upon the throne.

Edward VI (1547–53)

Henry was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Edward VI, but real power
passed to his brother-in-law, Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford, who
became duke of Somerset and lord protector shortly after the new reign
began. Somerset ruled in loco parentis; the divinity of the crown
resided in the boy king, but authority was exercised by an uncle who
proved himself to be more merciful than tactful and more idealistic than
practical. Sweet reason and tolerance were substituted for the old
king’s brutal laws. The treason and heresy acts were repealed or
modified, and the result came close to destroying the Tudor state. The
moment idle tongues could speak with impunity, the kingdom broke into a
chorus of religious and social discord.

To stem religious dissent, the lord protector introduced The Book of
Common Prayer in 1549 and an act of uniformity to enforce it. Written
primarily by Thomas Cranmer, the first prayer book of Edward VI was a
literary masterpiece but a political flop, for it failed in its purpose.
It sought to bring into a single Protestant fold all varieties of
middle-of-the-road religious beliefs by deliberately obscuring the
central issue of the exact nature of the mass—whether it was a
miraculous sacrament or a commemorative service. The Book of Common
Prayer succeeded only in antagonizing Protestants and Roman Catholics
alike.

Somerset is best remembered for these religious reforms, but their
effectiveness was much blunted by their association with greed. Henry
VIII had plundered and dissolved the monasteries and had mounted a
half-successful campaign to accuse the monastic communities of
corruption, licentiousness, and putting obedience to a foreign power
above their obedience to him. Somerset extended the state’s plunder to
the parish churches and to the gold and silver piously and generously
given by thousands of layfolk for the adornment of the parish churches.
Their descendants watched the desecration with sullen anger. The
rhetoric of cleansing parish churches of idolatrous and sacrilegious
images sounded hollow as wagonloads of gold and silver objects headed
toward the smelter’s shop in the lord protector’s backyard.

All this in turn was linked to what has been called Somerset’s idée
fixe, the permanent solution to the problem of the Anglo-Scottish
frontier. Every time Henry VIII had tried to assert his claims to French
territories, kings of Scotland had taken the opportunity to invade
England. On each occasion—and especially in 1513 and 1542—the Scottish
armies had been humiliated and a high proportion of the nobility killed
or captured (James IV had been killed at the Battle of Flodden, and,
when James V heard of the massacre of his nobility and men at Solway
Moss, “he turned his face to the wall and died”). In 1543 the captured
nobles agreed to a marriage treaty that was intended to see the marriage
of Henry’s son and heir, Edward VI, to the infant Mary (Mary, Queen of
Scots), with the aim of uniting the thrones of England and Scotland. But
the Scots broke their promise and shipped Mary off to France with the
intention of marrying her to the heir of the French throne. Foreseeing
the permanent annexation of Scotland to France in the same way that the
Netherlands had been annexed to Spain, Somerset determined to conquer
the Scottish Lowlands and to establish permanent castles and strongholds
as a buffer between the kingdoms. It cost him most of the country’s
remaining treasure and much of his popularity, and the whole policy
proved a failure.

Somerset was no more successful in solving the economic and social
difficulties of the reign. Rising prices, debasement of the currency,
and the cost of war had produced an inflationary crisis in which prices
doubled between 1547 and 1549. A false prosperity ensued in which the
wool trade boomed, but so also did enclosures with all their explosive
potential. The result was social revolution. Whether Somerset deserved
his title of “the good duke” is a matter of opinion. Certainly, the
peasants thought that he favoured the element in the House of Commons
that was anxious to tax sheep raisers and to curb enclosures and that
section of the clergy that was lashing out at economic inequality. In
the summer of 1549, the peasantry in Cornwall and Devonshire revolted
against the Prayer Book in the name of the good old religious days under
Henry VIII, and, almost simultaneously, the humble folk in Norfolk rose
up against the economic and social injustices of the century. At the
same time that domestic rebellion was stirring, the protector had to
face a political and international crisis, and he proved himself to be
neither a farsighted statesman nor a shrewd politician. He embroiled the
country in a war with Scotland that soon involved France and ended in an
inconclusive defeat, and he earned the enmity and disrespect of the
members of his own council. In the eyes of the ruling elite, Somerset
was responsible for governmental ineptitude and social and religious
revolution. The result was inevitable: a palace revolution ensued in
October 1549, in which he was arrested and deprived of office, and two
and a half years later he was executed on trumped-up charges of treason.

The protector’s successor and the man largely responsible for his
fall was John Dudley, earl of Warwick, who became duke of
Northumberland. The duke was a man of action who represented most of the
acquisitive aspects of the landed elements in society and who allied
himself with the extreme section of the Protestant reformers. Under
Northumberland, England pulled out of Scotland and in 1550 returned
Boulogne to France; social order was ruthlessly reestablished in the
countryside, the more conservative of the Henrician bishops were
imprisoned, the wealth of the parish churches was systematically looted,
and uncompromising Protestantism was officially sanctioned. The Ordinal
of 1550 transformed the divinely ordained priest into a preacher and
teacher, The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI (1552) was avowedly
Protestant, altars were turned into tables, clerical vestments gave way
to plain surplices, and religious orthodoxy was enforced by a new and
more stringent Act of Uniformity.

How long a kingdom still attached to the outward trappings of Roman
Catholicism would have tolerated doctrinal radicalism and the plundering
of chantry lands and episcopal revenues under Somerset and
Northumberland is difficult to say, but in 1553 the ground upon which
Northumberland had built his power crumbled: Edward was dying of
consumption. To save the kingdom from Roman Catholicism and himself from
Roman Catholic Mary, who was Edward’s successor under the terms of a
statute of Henry VIII as well as that king’s will, Northumberland—with
the support, perhaps even the encouragement, of the dying king—tried his
hand at kingmaking. Together they devised a new order of succession in
which Mary and Elizabeth were declared illegitimate and the crown passed
to Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister (Mary,
duchess of Suffolk) and, incidentally, Northumberland’s daughter-in-law.
The gamble failed, for when Edward died on July 6, 1553, the kingdom
rallied to the daughter of Catherine of Aragon. Whatever their religious
inclinations, Englishmen preferred a Tudor on the throne. In nine days
the interlude was over, and Northumberland and his daughter-in-law were
in the Tower of London.

Mary I (1553–58)

Roman Catholicism was not a lost cause when Mary came to the throne. If
she had lived as long as her sister Elizabeth was to live (the womb
cancer from which Mary died in 1558 not only brought her Catholic
restoration to an end but rendered her childless and heirless), England
would probably have been an irrevocably Catholic country. Mary was
indeed determined to restore Catholicism, but she was also determined to
act in accordance with the law. She worked with and through successive
Parliaments to reverse all the statutes that excluded papal jurisdiction
from England and to revoke her half-brother’s doctrinal and liturgical
reforms; however, she persuaded Rome to allow her to confirm the
dissolution of the monasteries and the secularization of church
properties. New monasteries were to be created, but the vast wealth of
the dissolved ones remained in lay hands. She also gave the married
Protestant clergy a straight choice: to remain with their wives and
surrender their livings or to surrender their wives and resume their
priestly ministry. Her resolute Catholicism was laced with realism. With
her principal adviser, Reginald Cardinal Pole, she planned for a
long-term improvement in the education and training of the clergy and
the sumptuous refurbishment of parish churches. She took her inspiration
from the Erasmian humanist reforms long championed by Pole in his
Italian exile. But this liberal Catholicism was in the process of being
repudiated by the Council of Trent, with its uncompromising policies.
Pole was recalled to Rome by a hard-line pope and accused of heresy for
his previous attempts to achieve an accommodation with Protestantism.
Mary’s plans were torpedoed as much by the internal struggle for control
of the Roman church as by the strength of Protestant opposition in
England. Most potential leaders of a resistance movement had been
encouraged by Mary to emigrate and had done so, but there were scores of
underground Protestant cells during her reign. In thousands of parish
churches, the restored liturgy and worship were welcomed.

Mary’s decision to marry Prince Philip of Spain (later Philip II),
her Habsburg cousin and the son of Charles V, the man who had defended
her mother’s marital rights, proved to be unwise. Given her age—she was
32 when she came to the throne—a quick marriage was essential to
childbearing, but this one proved to be a failure. Her marriage was
without love or children, and, by associating Roman Catholicism in the
popular mind with Spanish arrogance, it triggered a rebellion that
almost overthrew the Tudor throne. In January 1554, under the leadership
of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, the peasants of Kent rose up against
the queen’s Roman Catholic and Spanish policies, and 3,000 men marched
on London. The rebellion was crushed, but it revealed to Mary and her
chief minister, Cardinal Pole, that the kingdom was filled with disloyal
hearts who placed Protestantism and nationalism higher than their
obedience to the throne.

The tragedy of Mary’s reign was the belief not only that the old
church of her mother’s day could be restored but also that it could be
best served by fire and blood. At least 282 men and women were martyred
in the Smithfield Fires during the last three years of her reign;
compared with events on the Continent, the numbers were not large, but
the emotional impact was great. Among the first half-dozen martyrs were
the Protestant leaders Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, and John
Hooper, who were burned to strike terror into the hearts of lesser men.
Their deaths, however, had the opposite effect; their bravery encouraged
others to withstand the flames, and the Smithfield Fires continued to
burn because nobody could think of what to do with heretics except put
them to death. The law required it, the prisons were overflowing, and
the martyrs themselves offered the government no way out except to
enforce the grisly laws.

Mary’s reign was a study in failure. Her husband, who was 10 years
her junior, remained in England as short a time as possible; the war
between France and the Habsburg empire, into which her Spanish marriage
had dragged the kingdom, was a disaster and resulted in the loss of
England’s last Continental outpost, Calais; her subjects came to call
her “Bloody Mary” and greeted the news of her death and the succession
of her sister, Elizabeth, on Nov. 17, 1558, with ringing bells and
bonfires.

Elizabeth I (1558–1603)

No one in 1558, any more than in 1485, would have predicted that—despite
the social discord, political floundering, and international humiliation
of the past decade—the kingdom again stood on the threshold of an
extraordinary reign. To make matters worse, the new monarch was the
wrong sex. Englishmen knew that it was unholy and unnatural that “a
woman should reign and have empire above men.” At age 25, however,
Elizabeth I was better prepared than most women to have empire over men.
She had survived the palace revolutions of her brother’s reign and the
Roman Catholicism of her sister’s; she was the product of a fine
Renaissance education, and she had learned the need for strong secular
leadership devoid of religious bigotry. Moreover, she possessed her
father’s magnetism without his egotism or ruthlessness. She was also her
mother’s daughter, and the offspring of Anne Boleyn had no choice but to
reestablish the royal supremacy and once again sever the ties with Rome.

Elizabeth’s religious settlement was constructed on the doctrine of
adiaphorism, the belief that, except for a few fundamentals, there
exists in religion a wide area of “things indifferent” that could be
decided by the government on the basis of expediency. Conservative
opposition was blunted by entitling the queen “supreme governor,” not
“head,” of the church and by combining the words of the 1552 prayer book
with the more conservative liturgical actions of the 1549 prayer book.
At the same time, many of the old papal trappings of the church were
retained. Protestant radicals went along with this compromise in the
expectation that the principle of “things indifferent” meant that
Elizabeth would, when the political dust had settled, rid her church of
the “livery of Antichrist” and discard its “papal rags.” In this they
were badly mistaken, for the queen was determined to keep her religious
settlement exactly as it had been negotiated in 1559. As it turned out,
Roman Catholics proved to be better losers than Protestants: of the 900
parish clergy, only 189 refused to accept Elizabeth as supreme governor,
but the Protestant radicals—the future Puritans—were soon at loggerheads
with their new sovereign.

The Tudor ideal of governmentThe religious settlement was part of a larger social arrangement that
was authoritarian to its core. Elizabeth was determined to be queen in
fact as well as in name. She tamed the House of Commons with tact
combined with firmness, and she carried on a love affair with her
kingdom in which womanhood, instead of being a disadvantage, became her
greatest asset. The men she appointed to help her run and stage-manage
the government were politiques like herself: William Cecil, Baron
Burghley, her principal secretary and in 1572 her lord treasurer;
Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury; and a small group of other
moderate and secular men.

In setting her house in order, the queen followed the hierarchical
assumptions of her day. All creation was presumed to be a great chain of
being, running from the tiniest insect to the Godhead itself, and the
universe was seen as an organic whole in which each part played a
divinely prescribed role. In politics every element was expected to obey
“one head, one governor, one law” in exactly the same way as all parts
of the human body obeyed the brain. The crown was divine and gave
leadership, but it did not exist alone, nor could it claim a monopoly of
divinity, for all parts of the body politic had been created by God. The
organ that spoke for the entire kingdom was not the king alone but “king
in Parliament,” and, when Elizabeth sat in the midst of her Lords and
Commons, it was said that “every Englishman is intended to be there
present from the prince to the lowest person in England.” The Tudors
needed no standing army in “the French fashion” because God’s will and
the monarch’s decrees were enshrined in acts of Parliament, and this was
society’s greatest defense against rebellion. The controlling mind
within this mystical union of crown and Parliament belonged to the
queen. The Privy Council, acting as the spokesman of royalty, planned
and initiated all legislation, and Parliament was expected to turn that
legislation into law. Inside and outside Parliament the goal of Tudor
government was benevolent paternalism in which the strong hand of
authoritarianism was masked by the careful shaping of public opinion,
the artistry of pomp and ceremony, and the deliberate effort to tie the
ruling elite to the crown by catering to the financial and social
aspirations of the landed country gentleman. Every aspect of government
was intimate because it was small and rested on the support of probably
no more than 5,000 key persons. The bureaucracy consisted of a handful
of privy councillors at the top and possibly 500 paid civil servants at
the bottom—the 15 members of the secretariat, the 265 clerks and custom
officials of the treasury, a staff of 50 in the judiciary, and
approximately 150 more scattered in other departments. Tudor government
was not predominantly professional. Most of the work was done by unpaid
amateurs: the sheriffs of the shires, the lord lieutenants of the
counties, and, above all, the Tudor maids of all work, the 1,500 or so
justices of the peace. Meanwhile, each of the 180 “corporate” towns and
cities was governed by men chosen locally by a variety of means laid
down in the particular royal charter each had been granted.

Smallness did not mean lack of government, for the 16th-century state
was conceived of as an organic totality in which the possession of land
carried with it duties of leadership and service to the throne, and the
inferior part of society was obligated to accept the decisions of its
elders and betters. The Tudors were essentially medieval in their
economic and social philosophy. The aim of government was to curb
competition and regulate life so as to attain an ordered and stable
society in which all could share according to status. The Statute of
Apprentices of 1563 embodied this concept, for it assumed the moral
obligation of all men to work, the existence of divinely ordered social
distinctions, and the need for the state to define and control all
occupations in terms of their utility to society. The same assumption
operated in the famous Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601—the need to ensure a
minimum standard of living to all men and women within an organic and
noncompetitive society (see Poor Law). By 1600 poverty, unemployment,
and vagrancy had become too widespread for the church to handle, and the
state had to take over, instructing each parish to levy taxes to pay for
poor relief and to provide work for the able-bodied, punishment for the
indolent, and charity for the sick, the aged, and the disabled. The
Tudor social ideal was to achieve a static class structure by
guaranteeing a fixed labour supply, restricting social mobility, curbing
economic freedom, and creating a kingdom in which subjects could fulfill
their ultimate purpose in life—spiritual salvation, not material
well-being.

Elizabethan societySocial reality, at least for the poor and powerless, was probably a far
cry from the ideal, but for a few years Elizabethan England seemed to
possess an extraordinary internal balance and external dynamism. In part
the queen herself was responsible. She demanded no windows into men’s
souls, and she charmed both great and small with her artistry and tact.
In part, however, the Elizabethan Age was a success because men had at
their disposal new and exciting areas, both of mind and geography, into
which to channel their energies.

A revolution in reading (and to a lesser extent writing) was taking
place. By 1640 a majority of men, and just possibly a majority of men
and women, could read, and there were plenty of things for them to read.
In the year that Henry VIII came to the throne (1509), the number of
works licensed to be published was 38. In the year of Elizabeth’s
accession (1558), it was 77; in the year of her death (1603), it was
328. In the year of Charles I’s execution (1649), the number had risen
to 1,383. And by the time of the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), it had
reached 1,570. These figures do not include the ever-rising tide of
broadsheets and ballads that were intended to be posted on the walls of
inns and alehouses as well as in other public places. Given that a large
proportion of the illiterate population spent at least part of their
lives in service in homes with literate members and given that reading
in the early modern period was frequently an aural experience—official
documents being read aloud in market squares and parish churches and all
manner of publications being read aloud to whole households—a very high
proportion of the population had direct or indirect access to the
printed word.

There was very little church building in the century after the
Reformation, but there was an unprecedented growth of school building,
with grammar schools springing up in most boroughs and in many market
towns. By 1600 schools were provided for more than 10 percent of the
adolescent population, who were taught Latin and given an introduction
to Classical civilization and the foundations of biblical faith. There
was also a great expansion of university education; the number of
colleges in Oxford and Cambridge doubled in the 16th century, and the
number of students went up fourfold to 1,200 by 1640 (see University of
Oxford; University of Cambridge). The aim of Tudor education was less to
teach the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic) than to
establish mind control: to drill children “in the knowledge of their
duty toward God, their prince and all other[s] in their degree.” A
knowledge of Latin and a smattering of Greek became, even more than
elegant clothing, the mark of the social elite. The educated Englishman
was no longer a cleric but a justice of the peace or a member of
Parliament, a merchant or a landed gentleman who for the first time was
able to express his economic, political, and religious dreams and his
grievances in terms of abstract principles that were capable of
galvanizing people into religious and political parties. Without
literacy, the spiritual impact of the Puritans or, later, the formation
of parties based on ideologies that engulfed the kingdom in civil war
would have been impossible. So too would have been the cultural
explosion that produced William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund
Spenser, Francis Bacon, and John Donne.

Poets, scholars, and playwrights dreamed and put pen to paper.
Adventurers responded differently; they went “a-voyaging.” From a
kingdom that had once been known for its “sluggish security,” Englishmen
suddenly turned to the sea and the world that was opening up around
them. The first hesitant steps had been taken under Henry VII when John
Cabot in 1497 sailed in search of a northwest route to China and as a
consequence discovered Cape Breton Island. The search for Cathay became
an economic necessity in 1550 when the wool trade collapsed and
merchants had to find new markets for their cloth. In response, the
Muscovy Company was established to trade with Russia; by 1588, 100
vessels a year were visiting the Baltic. Martin Frobisher made a series
of voyages to northern Canada during the 1570s in the hope of finding
gold and a shortcut to the Orient; John Hawkins encroached upon Spanish
and Portuguese preserves and in 1562 sailed for Africa in quest of
slaves to sell to West Indian plantation owners; and Sir Francis Drake
circumnavigated the globe (Dec. 13, 1577–Sept. 26, 1580) in search of
the riches not only of the East Indies but also of Terra Australis, the
great southern continent. Suddenly, Englishmen were on the move: Sir
Humphrey Gilbert and his band of settlers set forth for Newfoundland
(1583); Sir Walter Raleigh organized what became the equally ill-fated
“lost colony” at Roanoke (1587–91); John Davis in his two small ships,
the Moonshine and the Sunshine, reached 72° north (1585–87), the
farthest north any Englishman had ever been; and the honourable East
India Company was founded to organize the silk and spice trade with the
Orient on a permanent basis. The outpouring was inspired not only by the
urge for riches but also by religion—the desire to labour in the Lord’s
vineyard and to found in the wilderness a new and better nation. As it
was said, Englishmen went forth “to seek new worlds for gold, for
praise, for glory.” Even the dangers of the reign—the precariousness of
Elizabeth’s throne and the struggle with Roman Catholic Spain—somehow
contrived to generate a self-confidence that had been lacking under “the
little Tudors.”

Mary, Queen of ScotsThe first decade of Elizabeth’s reign was relatively quiet, but after
1568 three interrelated matters set the stage for the crisis of the
century: the queen’s refusal to marry, the various plots to replace her
with Mary of Scotland, and the religious and economic clash with Spain.
Elizabeth Tudor’s virginity was the cause of great international
discussion, for every bachelor prince of Europe hoped to win a throne
through marriage with Gloriana (the queen of the fairies, as she was
sometimes portrayed), and was the source of even greater domestic
concern, for everyone except the queen herself was convinced that
Elizabeth should marry and produce heirs. The issue was the cause of her
first major confrontation with the House of Commons, which was informed
that royal matrimony was not a subject for commoners to discuss.
Elizabeth preferred maidenhood—it was politically safer and her most
useful diplomatic weapon—but it gave poignancy to the intrigues of her
cousin Mary, Queen of Scots.

Mary had been an unwanted visitor-prisoner in England ever since
1568, after she had been forced to abdicate her Scottish throne in
favour of her 13-month-old son, James VI (later James I). She was Henry
VIII’s grandniece and, in the eyes of many Roman Catholics and a number
of political malcontents, the rightful ruler of England, for Mary of
Scotland was a Roman Catholic. As the religious hysteria mounted, there
was steady pressure put on Elizabeth to rid England of this dangerous
threat, but the queen delayed a final decision for almost 19 years. In
the end, however, she had little choice. Mary played into the hands of
her religious and political enemies by involving herself in a series of
schemes to unseat her cousin. One plot helped to trigger the rebellion
of the northern earls in 1569. Another, the Ridolfi plot of 1571 (see
Ridolfi, Roberto), called for an invasion by Spanish troops stationed in
the Netherlands and for the removal of Elizabeth from the throne and
resulted in the execution in 1572 of Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, the
ranking peer of the realm. Yet another, the Babington plot of 1586, led
by Anthony Babington, allowed the queen’s ministers to pressure her into
agreeing to the trial and execution of Mary for high treason.

The clash with Spain Mary was executed on Feb. 8, 1587; by then England had moved from cold
war to open war against Spain. Philip II was the colossus of Europe and
leader of resurgent Roman Catholicism. His kingdom was strong: Spanish
troops were the best in Europe, Spain itself had been carved out of
territory held by the infidel and still retained its Crusading zeal, and
the wealth of the New World poured into the treasury at Madrid. Spanish
preeminence was directly related to the weakness of France, which, ever
since the accidental death of Henry II in 1559, had been torn by
factional strife and civil and religious war. In response to this
diplomatic and military imbalance, English foreign policy underwent a
fundamental change. By the Treaty of Blois in 1572, England gave up its
historic enmity with France, accepting by implication that Spain was the
greater danger. It is difficult to say at what point a showdown between
Elizabeth and her former brother-in-law became unavoidable—there were so
many areas of disagreement—but the two chief points were the refusal of
English merchants-cum-buccaneers to recognize Philip’s claims to a
monopoly of trade wherever the Spanish flag flew throughout the world
and the military and financial support given by the English to Philip’s
rebellious and heretical subjects in the Netherlands.

The most blatant act of English poaching in Spanish imperial waters
was Drake’s circumnavigation of the Earth, during which Spanish shipping
was looted, Spanish claims to California ignored, and Spanish world
dominion proved to be a paper empire. But the encounter that really
poisoned Anglo-Iberian relations was the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa in
September 1568, where a small fleet captained by Hawkins and Drake was
ambushed and almost annihilated through Spanish perfidy. Only Hawkins in
the Minion and Drake in the Judith escaped. The English cried foul
treachery, but the Spanish dismissed the action as sensible tactics when
dealing with pirates. Drake and Hawkins never forgot or forgave, and it
was Hawkins who, as treasurer of the navy, began to build the
revolutionary ships that would later destroy the old-fashioned galleons
of the Spanish Armada.

If the English never forgave Philip’s treachery at San Juan de Ulúa,
the Spanish never forgot Elizabeth’s interference in the Netherlands,
where Dutch Protestants were in full revolt. At first, aid had been
limited to money and the harbouring of Dutch ships in English ports,
but, after the assassination of the Protestant leader, William I, in
1584, the position of the rebels became so desperate that in August 1585
Elizabeth sent over an army of 6,000 under the command of Robert Dudley,
earl of Leicester. Reluctantly, Philip decided on war against England as
the only way of exterminating heresy and disciplining his subjects in
the Netherlands. Methodically, he began to build a fleet of 130 vessels,
31,000 men, and 2,431 cannons to hold naval supremacy in the English
Channel long enough for Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, and his army,
stationed at Dunkirk, to cross over to England.

Nothing Elizabeth could do seemed to be able to stop the Armada
Catholica. She sent Drake to Spain in April 1587 in a spectacular strike
at that portion of the fleet forming at Cádiz, but it succeeded only in
delaying the sailing date. That delay, however, was important, for
Philip’s admiral of the ocean seas, the veteran Álvaro de Bazán, marqués
de Santa Cruz, died, and the job of sailing the Armada was given to
Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, duque de Medina-Sidonia, who was invariably
seasick and confessed that he knew more about gardening than war. What
ensued was not the new commander’s fault. He did the best he could in an
impossible situation, for Philip’s Armada was invincible in name only.
It was technologically and numerically outclassed by an English fleet of
close to 200. Worse, its strategic purpose was grounded on a fallacy:
that Parma’s troops could be conveyed to England. The Spanish controlled
no deepwater port in the Netherlands in which the Armada’s great
galleons and Parma’s light troop-carrying barges could rendezvous. Even
the Deity seemed to be more English than Spanish, and in the end the
fleet, buffeted by gales, was dashed to pieces as it sought to escape
home via the northern route around Scotland and Ireland. Of the 130
ships that had left Spain, perhaps 85 crept home; 10 were captured,
sunk, or driven aground by English guns, 23 were sacrificed to wind and
storm, and 12 others were “lost, fate unknown.”

Internal discontentWhen the Armada was defeated during the first weeks of August 1588, the
crisis of Elizabeth’s reign was reached and successfully passed. The
last years of her reign were an anticlimax, for the moment the
international danger was surmounted, domestic strife ensued. There were
moments of great heroism and success—as when Robert Devereux, earl of
Essex, Raleigh, and Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk, made a second
descent on Cádiz in 1596, seized the city, and burned the entire West
Indian treasure fleet—but the war so gloriously begun deteriorated into
a costly campaign in the Netherlands and France and an endless guerrilla
action in Ireland, where Philip discovered he could do to Elizabeth what
she had been doing to him in the Low Countries. Even on the high seas,
the days of fabulous victories were over, for the king of Spain soon
learned to defend his empire and his treasure fleets. Both Drake and
Hawkins died in 1596 on the same ill-conceived expedition into Spanish
Caribbean waters—symbolic proof that the good old days of buccaneering
were gone forever. At home the cost of almost two decades of war (£4
million) raised havoc with the queen’s finances. It forced her to sell
her capital (about £800,000, or roughly one-fourth of all crown lands)
and increased her dependence upon parliamentary sources of income, which
rose from an annual average of £35,000 to over £112,000 a year.

The expedition to the Netherlands was not, however, the most costly
component of the protracted conflict; indeed, the privateering war
against Spain more than paid for itself. The really costly war of the
final years of Elizabeth’s reign was in Ireland, where a major rebellion
in response to the exclusion of native Catholics from government and to
the exploitation of every opportunity to replace native Catholics with
Protestant English planters tied down thousands of English soldiers. The
rebellion was exacerbated by Spanish intervention and even by a Spanish
invasion force (the element of the Armada that temporarily succeeded).
This Nine Years War (1594–1603) was eventually won by the English but
only with great brutality and at great expense of men and treasure.

Elizabeth’s financial difficulties were a symptom of a mounting
political crisis that under her successors would destroy the entire
Tudor system of government. The 1590s were years of depression—bad
harvests, soaring prices, peasant unrest, high taxes, and increasing
parliamentary criticism of the queen’s economic policies and political
leadership. Imperceptibly, the House of Commons was becoming the
instrument through which the will of the landed classes could be heard
and not an obliging organ of royal control. In Tudor political theory
this was a distortion of the proper function of Parliament, which was
meant to beseech and petition, never to command or initiate. Three
things, however, forced theory to make way for reality. First was the
government’s financial dependence on the Commons, for the organ that
paid the royal piper eventually demanded that it also call the
governmental tune. Second, under the Tudors, Parliament had been
summoned so often and forced to legislate on such crucial matters of
church and state—legitimizing and bastardizing monarchs, breaking with
Rome, proclaiming the supreme headship (governorship under Elizabeth),
establishing the royal succession, and legislating in areas that no
Parliament had ever dared enter before—that the Commons got into the
habit of being consulted. Inevitably, a different constitutional
question emerged: If Parliament is asked to give authority to the crown,
can it also take away that authority? Finally, there was the growth of a
vocal, politically conscious, and economically dominant gentry; the
increase in the size of the House of Commons reflected the activity and
importance of that class. In Henry VIII’s first Parliament, there were
74 knights who sat for 37 shires and 224 burgesses who represented the
chartered boroughs and towns of the kingdom. By the end of Elizabeth’s
reign, borough representation had been increased by 135 seats. The
Commons was replacing the Lords in importance because the social element
it represented had become economically and politically more important
than the nobility. Should the crown’s leadership falter, there existed
by the end of the century an organization that was quite capable of
seizing the political initiative, for as one disgruntled contemporary
noted: “the foot taketh upon him the part of the head and commons is
become a king.” Elizabeth had sense enough to avoid a showdown with the
Commons, and she retreated under parliamentary attack on the issue of
her prerogative rights to grant monopolies regulating and licensing the
economic life of the kingdom, but on the subject of her religious
settlement she refused to budge.

By the last decade of her reign, Puritanism was on the increase.
During the 1570s and ’80s, “cells” had sprung up to spread God’s word
and rejuvenate the land, and Puritan strength was centred in exactly
that segment of society that had the economic and social means to
control the realm—the gentry and merchant classes. What set a Puritan
off from other Protestants was the literalness with which he held to his
creed, the discipline with which he watched his soul’s health, the
militancy of his faith, and the sense that he was somehow apart from the
rest of corrupt humanity. This disciplined spiritual elite clashed with
the queen over the purification of the church and the stamping out of
the last vestiges of Roman Catholicism. The controversy went to the root
of society: Was the purpose of life spiritual or political? Was the role
of the church to serve God or the crown? In 1576 two brothers, Paul and
Peter Wentworth, led the Puritan attack in the Commons, criticizing the
queen for her refusal to allow Parliament to debate religious issues.
The crisis came to a head in 1586, when Puritans called for legislation
to abolish the episcopacy and the Anglican prayer book. Elizabeth
ordered the bills to be withdrawn, and, when Peter Wentworth raised the
issue of freedom of speech in the Commons, she answered by clapping him
in the Tower of London. There was emerging in England a group of
religious idealists who derived their spiritual authority from a source
that stood higher than the crown and who thereby violated the concept of
the organic society and endangered the very existence of the Tudor
paternalistic monarchy. As early as 1573 the threat had been recognized:

At the beginning it was but a cap, a surplice, and a tippet [over
which Puritans complained]; now, it is grown to bishops, archbishops,
and cathedral churches, to the overthrow of the established order, and
to the Queen’s authority in causes ecclesiastical.

James I later reduced the problem to one of his usual bons mots—“no
bishop, no king.” Elizabeth’s answer was less catchy but more effective;
she appointed as archbishop John Whitgift, who was determined to destroy
Puritanism as a politically organized sect. Whitgift was only partially
successful, but the queen was correct: the moment the international
crisis was over and a premium was no longer placed on loyalty, Puritans
were potential security risks.

Puritans were a loyal opposition, a church within the church.
Elizabethan governments never feared that there would or could be a
Puritan insurrection in the way they constantly feared that there could
and would be an insurrection by papists. Perhaps 1 in 5 of the peerage,
1 in 10 of the gentry, and 1 in 50 of the population were practicing
Catholics, many of them also being occasional conformists in the
Anglican church to avoid the severity of the law. Absence from church
made householders liable to heavy fines; associating with priests made
them liable to incarceration or death. To be a priest in England was
itself treasonous; in the second half of the reign, more than 300
Catholics were tortured to death, even more than the number of
Protestants burned at the stake by Mary. Some priests, especially
Jesuits, did indeed preach political revolution, but many others
preached a dual allegiance—to the queen in all civil matters and to Rome
in matters of the soul. Most laymen were willing to follow this more
moderate advice, but it did not stem the persecution or alleviate the
paranoia of the Elizabethan establishment.

Catholicism posed a political threat to Elizabethan England. Witches
posed a cultural threat. From early in Elizabeth’s reign, concern grew
that men and (more particularly) women on the margins of society were
casting spells on respectable folk with whom they were in conflict.
Explanations abound. Accusations seem to have often arisen when someone
with wealth denied a request for personal charity to someone in need,
with the excuse that the state had now taken over responsibility for
institutional relief through the Poor Laws; guilt about this refusal of
charity would give way to blaming the poor person who had been turned
away for any ensuing misfortunes. Sometimes magisterial encouragement of
witchcraft prosecutions was related to the intellectual search for the
causes of natural disasters that fell short of an explanation more
plausible than the casting of spells. Sometimes there was concern over
the existence of “cunning men and women” with inherited knowledge based
on a cosmology incompatible with the new Protestantism. This was
especially the case when the cunning men and women were taking over the
casting of spells and incantations that had been the province of the
Catholic priest but were not the province of the Protestant minister.
Certainly, the rise in incidence of witchcraft trials and executions can
be taken as evidence of a society not at peace with itself. As the
century ended, there was a crescendo of social unrest and controlled
crowd violence. There were riots about the enclosure of common land,
about the enforced movement of grain from producing regions to areas of
shortage, about high taxes and low wages, and about the volatility of
trade. The decades on either side of the turn of the century saw roaring
inflation and the first real evidence of the very young and the very old
starving to death in remote areas and in London itself. Elizabethan
England ended in a rich cultural harvest and real physical misery for
people at the two ends of the social scale, respectively.

The final years of Gloriana’s life were difficult both for the theory
of Tudor kingship and for Elizabeth herself. She began to lose hold over
the imaginations of her subjects, and she faced the only palace
revolution of her reign when her favourite, the earl of Essex, sought to
take her crown. There was still fight in the old queen, and Essex ended
on the scaffold in 1601, but his angry demand could not be ignored:

What! Cannot princes err? Cannot subjects receive wrong? Is an
earthly power or authority infinite? Pardon me, pardon me, my good Lord,
I can never subscribe to these principles.

When the queen died on March 24, 1603, it was as if the critics of
her style of rule and her concept of government had been waiting
patiently for her to step down. It was almost with relief that men
looked forward to the problems of a new dynasty and a new century, as
well as to a man, not a woman, upon the throne.

Lacey Baldwin Smith
John S. Morrill

The early Stuarts and the Commonwealth

England in 1603

Economy and societyAt the beginning of the 17th century, England and Wales contained more
than four million people. The population had nearly doubled over the
previous century, and it continued to grow for another 50 years. The
heaviest concentrations of population were in the southeast and along
the coasts. Population increase created severe social and economic
problems, not the least of which was a long-term price inflation.
English society was predominantly rural, with as much as 85 percent of
its people living on the land. About 800 small market towns of several
hundred inhabitants facilitated local exchange, and, in contrast to most
of western Europe, there were few large urban areas. Norwich and Bristol
were the biggest provincial cities, with populations of around 15,000.
Exeter, York, and Newcastle were important regional centres, though they
each had about 10,000 inhabitants. Only London could be ranked with the
great continental cities. Its growth had outstripped even the doubling
of the general population. By the beginning of the 17th century, it
contained more than a quarter of a million people and by the end nearly
half a million, most of them poor migrants who flocked to the capital in
search of work or charity. London was the centre of government, of
overseas trade and finance, and of fashion, taste, and culture. It was
ruled by a merchant oligarchy, whose wealth increased tremendously over
the course of the century as international trade expanded.

London not only ruled the English mercantile world, but it also
dominated the rural economy of the southeast by its insatiable demand
for food and clothing. The rural economy was predominately agricultural,
with mixed animal and grain husbandry practiced wherever the land
allowed. The population increase, however, placed great pressure upon
the resources of local communities, and efforts by landlords and tenants
to raise productivity for either profit or survival were the key feature
of agricultural development. Systematic efforts to grow luxury market
crops like wheat, especially in the environs of London, drove many
smaller tenants from the land. So too did the practice of enclosure,
which allowed for more productive land use by large holders at the
expense of their poorer neighbours. There is evidence of a rural
subsistence crisis lasting throughout the first two decades of the
century. Marginally productive land came under the plow, rural revolts
became more common, and harvest failures resulted in starvation rather
than hunger, both in London and in the areas remote from the
grain-growing lowlands—such as north Wales and the Lake District. It was
not until the middle of the century that the rural economy fully
recovered and entered a period of sustained growth. A nation that could
barely feed itself in 1600 was an exporter of grain by 1700.

In the northeast and southwest the harsher climate and poorer soils
were more suited for sheep raising than for large-scale cereal
production. The northeast and southwest were the location of the only
significant manufacturing activity in England, the woolen cloth
industry. Wool was spun into large cloths for export to Holland, where
the highly technical finishing processes were performed before it was
sold commercially. Because spinning and weaving provided employment for
thousands of families, the downturn of the cloth trade at the beginning
of the 17th century compounded the economic problems brought about by
population increase. This situation worsened considerably after the
opening of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), as trade routes became
disrupted and as new and cheaper sources of wool were developed. But the
transformation of the English mercantile economy from its previous
dependence upon a single commodity into a diversified entrepôt that
transshipped dozens of domestic and colonial products was one of the
most significant developments of the century.

The economic divide between rich and poor, between surplus and
subsistence producers, was a principal determinant of rank and status.
English society was organized hierarchically with a tightly defined
ascending order of privileges and responsibilities. This hierarchy was
as apparent in the family as it was in the state. In the family, as
elsewhere, male domination was the rule; husbands ruled their wives,
masters their servants, parents their children. But if hierarchy was
stratified, it was not ossified; those who attained wealth could achieve
status. The social hierarchy reflected gradations of wealth and
responded to changes in the economic fortunes of individuals. In this
sense it was more open than most European societies. Old wealth was not
preferred to new, and an ancient title conferred no greater privileges
than recent elevation; the humble could rise to become gentle, and the
gentle could fall to become humble.

During the early 17th century a small titular peerage composed of
between 75 and 100 peers formed the apex of the social structure. Their
titles were hereditary, passed from father to eldest son, and they were
among the wealthiest subjects of the state. Most were local magnates,
inheriting vast county estates and occupying honorific positions in
local government. The peerage was the military class of the nation, and
in the counties peers held the office of lord lieutenant. Most were also
called to serve at court, but at the beginning of the century their
power was still local rather than central.

Below them were the gentry, who probably composed only about 5
percent of the rural population but who were rising in importance and
prestige. The gentry were not distinguished by title, though many were
knights and several hundred purchased the rank of baronet (hereditary
knighthoods) after it was created in 1611. Sir Thomas Smith defined a
member of the gentry as “he that can bear the port and charge of a
gentleman.” The gentry were expected to provide hospitality for their
neighbours, treat their tenants paternally, and govern their counties.
They served as deputy lieutenants, militia captains, and most important,
as justices of the peace. To the justices fell the responsibility of
enforcing the king’s law and keeping the king’s peace. They worked
individually to mediate local disputes and collectively at quarter
sessions to try petty crimes. As the magistracy the gentry were the
backbone of county governance, and they maintained a fierce local
independence even while enforcing the edicts of the crown.

Beneath the gentry were those who laboured for their survival. There
were many prosperous tenants who were styled yeomen to denote their
economic independence and the social gulf between them and those who
eked out a bare existence. Some were the younger sons of gentlemen;
others aspired to enter the ranks of the gentry, having amassed
sufficient wealth to be secure against the fluctuations of the early
modern economy. Like the gentry, the yeomanry were involved in local
government, performing most of the day-to-day, face-to-face tasks.
Yeomen were village elders, constables, and tax collectors, and they
composed the juries that heard cases at quarter sessions. Most owned
sufficient freehold land to be politically enfranchised and to
participate in parliamentary selections. Filling out the ranks of rural
society were husbandmen, cottagers, and labourers. Husbandmen were
tenant farmers at or near self-sufficiency; cottagers were tenants with
cottages and scraps of land, dependent on a range of by-employments to
make ends meet (“an economy of makeshifts”); and labourers were those
who were entirely dependent on waged employment on the land of others.
They were the vast majority of local inhabitants, and their lives were
bound up in the struggle for survival.

In towns, tradesmen and shopkeepers occupied the ranks below the
ruling elites, but their occupational status clearly separated them from
artisans, apprentices, and labourers. They were called the middling sort
and were active in both civic and church affairs, holding the same minor
offices as yeomen or husbandmen. Because of the greater concentrations
of wealth and educational opportunities, the urban middling sort were
active participants in urban politics.

Government and societySeventeenth-century government was inextricably bound together with the
social hierarchy that dominated local communities. Rank, status, and
reputation were the criteria that enabled members of the local elite to
serve the crown either in the counties or at court. Political theory
stressed hierarchy, patriarchy, and deference in describing the natural
order of English society. Most of the aristocracy and gentry were the
king’s own tenants, whose obligations to him included military service,
taxes, and local office holding. The monarch’s claim to be God’s
vice-regent on earth was relatively uncontroversial, especially since
his obligations to God included good governance. Except in dire
emergency, the monarch could not abridge the laws and customs of England
nor seize the persons or property of his subjects.

The monarch ruled personally, and the permanent institutions of
government were constantly being reshaped. Around the king was the
court, a floating body of royal servants, officeholders, and place
seekers. Personal service to the king was considered a social honour and
thus fitting to those who already enjoyed rank and privilege. Most of
the aristocracy and many gentlemen were in constant attendance at court,
some with lucrative offices to defray their expenses, others
extravagantly running through their fortunes. There was no essential
preparation for royal service, no necessary skills or experiences.
Commonly, members of the elite were educated at universities and the law
courts, and most made a grand tour of Europe, where they studied
languages and culture. But their entry into royal service was normally
through the patronage of family members and connections rather than
through ability.

From among his court the monarch chose the Privy Council. Its size
and composition remained fluid, but it was largely composed of the chief
officers of state: the lord treasurer, who oversaw revenue; the lord
chancellor, who was the crown’s chief legal officer; and the lord
chamberlain, who was in charge of the king’s household. The archbishop
of Canterbury was the leading churchman of the realm, and he advised the
king, who was the head of the established church. The Privy Council
advised the king on foreign and domestic policy and was charged with the
administration of government. It communicated with the host of unpaid
local officials who governed in the communities, ordering the justices
to enforce statutes or the deputy lieutenants to raise forces. In these
tasks the privy councillors relied not only upon the king’s warrant but
upon their own local power and prestige as well. Thus, while the king
was free to choose his own councillors, he was constrained to pick those
who were capable of commanding respect. The advice that he received at
the council table was from men who kept one eye on their localities and
the other on the needs of central policy.

This interconnection between the centre and the localities was also
seen in the composition of Parliament. Parliament was another of the
king’s councils, though its role in government was less well defined
than the Privy Council’s and its summoning was intermittent. In the
early 17th century, Parliament was less an institution than an event; it
was convened when the king sought the aid of his subjects in the process
of creating new laws or to provide extraordinary revenue. Like
everything else in English society, Parliament was constituted in a
hierarchy, composed of the king, Lords, and Commons. Every peer of the
realm was personally summoned to sit in the House of Lords, which was
dominated by the greatest of the king’s officers. The lower house was
composed of representatives selected from the counties and boroughs of
the nation. The House of Commons was growing as local communities
petitioned for the right to be represented in Parliament and local
gentry scrambled for the prestige of being chosen. It had 464 members in
1604 and 507 forty years later. Selection to the House of Commons was a
mark of distinction, and many communities rotated the honour among their
most important citizens and neighbours. Although there were elaborate
regulations governing who could choose and who could be chosen, in fact
very few members of the House of Commons were selected competitively.
Contests for places were uncommon, and elections in which individual
votes were cast were extremely rare.

Members of Parliament served the dual function of representing the
views of the localities to the king and of representing the views of the
king to the localities. Most were members of royal government, either at
court or in their local communities, and nearly all had responsibility
for enforcing the laws that were created at Westminster. Most
Parliaments were summoned to provide revenue in times of emergency,
usually for defense, and most members were willing to provide it within
appropriate limits. They came to Parliament to do the king’s business,
the business of their communities, and their own personal business in
London. Such conflicting obligations were not always easily resolved,
but Parliament was not perceived as an institution in opposition to the
king any more than the stomach was seen as opposing the head of the
body. There were upsets, however, and, increasingly during the 17th
century, king and Parliament clashed over specific issues, but until the
middle of the century they were part of one system of royal government.

James I (1603–25)

James VI, king of Scotland (1567–1625), was the most experienced monarch
to accede to the English throne since William the Conqueror, as well as
one of the greatest of all Scottish kings. A model of the philosopher
prince, James wrote political treatises such as The Trew Law of a Free
Monarchy (1598), debated theology with learned divines, and reflected
continually on the art of statecraft. He governed his poor by balancing
its factions of clans and by restraining the enthusiastic leaders of its
Presbyterian church. In Scotland, James was described as pleasing to
look at and pleasing to hear. He was sober in habit, enjoyed vigorous
exercise, and doted on his Danish wife, Anne, who had borne him two male
heirs.

But James I was viewed with suspicion by his new subjects. Centuries
of hostility between the two nations had created deep enmities, and
these could be seen in English descriptions of the king. In them he was
characterized as hunchbacked and ugly, with a tongue too large for his
mouth and a speech impediment that obscured his words. It was said that
he drank to excess and spewed upon his filthy clothing. It was also
rumoured that he was homosexual and that he took advantage of the young
boys brought to service at court. This caricature, which has long
dominated the popular view of James I, was largely the work of
disappointed English office seekers whose pique clouded their
observations and the judgments of generations of historians.

In fact, James showed his abilities from the first. In the counties
through which he passed on his way to London, he lavished royal bounty
upon the elites who had been starved for honours during Elizabeth’s
parsimonious reign. He knighted hundreds as he went, enjoying the
bountiful entertainments that formed such a contrast with his indigent
homeland. He would never forget these first encounters with his English
subjects, “their eyes flaming nothing but sparkles of affection.” On his
progress James also received a petition, putatively signed by a thousand
ministers, calling his attention to the unfinished business of church
reform.

Triple monarchyJames had one overriding ambition: to create a single unified monarchy
out of the congeries of territories he now found himself ruling. He
wanted a union not only of the crown but of the kingdoms. He made it
plain to his first Parliament that he wanted a single name for this new
single kingdom: he wanted to be king not of England, Scotland, and
Ireland but of Great Britain, and that is what he put on his seals and
on his coins. He wanted common citizenship, the end of trade barriers,
and gradual movement toward a union of laws, of institutions, and of
churches, although he knew this could not be achieved overnight. The
chauvinism of too many English elite, however, meant he was not to
achieve all of his goals. A common coinage, a common flag, the abolition
of hostile laws, and a joint Anglo-Scottish plantation of Ulster were
all he was able to manage. Even free trade between the kingdoms was
prevented by the amateur lawyers in the English House of Commons. Having
failed to promote union by legislation, he tried to promote it by
stealth, creating a pan-British court and royal household, elevating
Scots to the English peerage and Englishmen to the Scottish and Irish
peerage, rewarding those who intermarried across borders, and seeking to
remove from each of the churches those features objectionable to members
of the other national churches. Progress was negligible and, under his
son Charles I, went into reverse.

Religious policyThe Millenary Petition (1603) initiated a debate over the religious
establishment that James intended to defend. The king called a number of
his leading bishops to hold a formal disputation with the reformers. The
Hampton Court Conference (1604) saw the king in his element. He took a
personal role in the debate and made clear that he hoped to find a place
in his church for moderates of all stripes. It was only extremists that
he intended to “harry from the land,” those who, unlike the supporters
of the Millenary Petition, sought to tear down the established church.
The king responded favourably to the call for creating a better-educated
and better-paid clergy and referred several doctrinal matters to the
consideration of convocation. But only a few of the points raised by the
petitioners found their way into the revised canons of 1604. In fact,
the most important result of the conference was the establishment of a
commission to provide an authorized English translation of the Bible,
the King James Version (1611).

Indeed, James’s hope was that moderates of all persuasions, Roman
Catholic and Protestant alike, might dwell together in his church. He
offered to preside at a general council of all the Christian
churches—Catholic and Protestant—to seek a general reconciliation.
Liberals in all churches took his offer seriously. He sought to find a
formula for suspending or ameliorating the laws against Catholics if
they would take a binding oath of political obedience. Most Catholics
were attracted by the offer, but James’s plans took a tremendous knock
when an unrepresentative group of Catholics, disappointed that this son
of a Catholic queen had not immediately restored Catholic liberties,
plotted to kill him, his family, and his leading supporters by blowing
up the Houses of Parliament in the course of a state opening, using
gunpowder secreted in a cellar immediately beneath the House of Lords.
The failure of the Gunpowder Plot (1605) led to reprisals against
Catholics and prevented James from going any further than exhibiting
humane leniency toward them in the later years of his reign.
Nevertheless, James’s ecumenical outlook did much to defuse religious
conflict and led to 20 years of relative peace within the English
church.

Finance and politicsTo a king whose annual budget in Scotland was barely £50,000, England
looked like the land of milk and honey. But in fact James I inherited
serious financial problems, which his own liberality quickly compounded.
Elizabeth had left a debt of more than £400,000, and James, with a wife
and two sons, had much larger household expenses than the unmarried
queen. Land and duties from customs were the major sources of royal
revenue, and it was James’s good fortune that the latter increased
dramatically after the judges ruled in Bate’s case (1606) that the king
could make impositions on imported commodities without the consent of
Parliament. Two years later, under the direction of James’s able
minister Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, impositions were levied on an
expanded list of goods, and a revised book of rates was issued in 1608
that increased the level of duties. By these measures customs revenues
grew by £70,000 per year.

But even this windfall was not enough to stem the effects of
inflation on the one hand and James’s own free spending on the other. By
1606 royal debt was more than £600,000, and the crown’s financial
ministers had turned their attention to prerogative income from
wardships, purveyance, and the discovery of concealed lands (i.e., crown
lands on which rents and dues were not being paid). The revival and
rationalization of these ancient rights created an outcry. As early as
1604 Salisbury was examining proposals to commute these fiscal rights
into an annual sum to be raised by a land tax. By 1610 negotiations
began for the Great Contract between the king and his taxpaying subjects
that aimed to raise £200,000 a year. But at the last moment both royal
officials and leaders of the House of Commons backed away from the deal,
the government believing that the sum was too low and the leaders of the
Commons that a land tax was too unpopular. The failure of the Great
Contract drove Salisbury to squeeze even more revenue out of the king’s
feudal rights, including the sale of titles. This policy violated the
spirit of principles about property and personal liberty held by the
governing classes and, along with impositions, was identified as a
grievance during James’s first Parliaments.

There was much suspicion that the Scottish king would not understand
the procedures and privileges of an English Parliament, and this
suspicion was reinforced by James’s speeches in the first session of the
Parliament of 1604–10. The conventional ban upon the selection of
outlaws to the Commons led to the Buckinghamshire Election Case (1604).
The Commons reversed a decision by the lord chancellor and ordered
Francis Goodwin, an outlaw, to be seated in the House of Commons. James
clumsily intervened in the proceedings, stating that the privileges of
the Commons had been granted by the grace of the monarch, a
pronouncement that stirred the embers of Elizabethan disputes over
parliamentary privilege. Although a compromise solution to the case was
found, from this time forward the Commons took an active role in
scrutinizing the returns of its members. A standing committee on
elections was formed, and the freedom of members from arrest during
sessions was reasserted. Some wanted to go even further and present the
king with a defense of the ancient rights of their house. But this
so-called apology was the work of a minority and was never accepted by
the whole House of Commons or presented to the king.

Factions and favouritesAs in the previous reign, court politics were factionalized around noble
groups tied together by kinship and interest. James had promoted members
of the Howard family to places of leadership in his government; Henry
Howard, earl of Northampton, adeptly led a family group that included
Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk, and Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel. All
managed to enrich themselves at the expense of the king, whose debts
reached £900,000 by 1618. A stink of corruption pervaded the court
during these years. The Howards formed the core of a pro-Spanish faction
that desired better relations with Spain and better treatment of English
Catholics. They also played upon the king’s desire for peace in Europe.

The Howards were opposed by an anti-Spanish group that included the
queen; George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury; and William Herbert, earl
of Pembroke. This group wished to pursue an aggressively Protestant
foreign policy and, after the opening of the Thirty Years’ War, to
support James’s son-in-law, Frederick V, the elector of the Palatinate.
It was the anti-Spanish group that introduced the king to George
Villiers, reputedly one of the handsomest men in Europe. Through
Villiers they sought a conduit to power.

Even at the time it was thought unseemly that a lover should be
provided for the king at the connivance of the queen and the archbishop.
But Villiers was nobody’s fool, and, while he succeeded spectacularly in
gaining James’s confidence, he refused to be a cipher for those who had
advanced him. Soon he had risen to the pinnacle of the aristocracy.
First knighted in 1615, he was created duke of Buckingham in 1623, the
first nonroyal duke in half a century. Buckingham proved an able
politician. He supported the movement for fiscal reform that led to the
disgrace of Lord Treasurer Suffolk and the promotion of Lionel
Cranfield, later earl of Middlesex. Cranfield, a skilled London
merchant, took the royal accounts in hand and made the unpopular
economies that kept government afloat.

Buckingham, whose power rested upon his relationship with the king,
wholeheartedly supported James’s desire to reestablish peace in Europe.
For years James had angled to marry his son Charles to a Spanish
princess. There were, however, many obstacles to this plan, not the
least of which was the insistence of the pope that the marriage lead to
the reconversion of England to Roman Catholicism. When negotiations
remained inconclusive, James, in 1621, called his third Parliament with
the intention of asking for money to support the Protestant cause. By
this means he hoped to bully Philip IV of Spain into concluding the
marriage negotiations and into using his influence to put an end to the
German war.

Parliament, believing that James intended to initiate a trade war
with Spain, readily granted the king’s request for subsidies. But some
members mistakenly also believed that the king wished their advice on
military matters and on the prince’s marriage. When James learned that
foreign policy was being debated in the lower house, he rebuked the
members for their temerity in breaching the royal prerogative. Stunned,
both because they thought that they were following the king’s wishes and
because they believed in their freedom to discuss such matters, members
of the Commons prepared the Protestation of 1621, exculpating their
conduct and setting forth a statement of the liberties of the house.
James sent for the Commons journal and personally ripped the
protestation from it. He reiterated his claim that royal marriages and
foreign policy were beyond the ken of Parliament and dryly noted that
less than one-third of the elected members of the house had been present
when the protestation was passed.

The Parliament of 1621 was a failure at all levels. No legislation
other than the subsidy bill was passed; a simple misunderstanding among
the members had led to a dramatic confrontation with the king; and
judicial impeachments were revived, costing the king the services of
Lord Chancellor Bacon. James, moreover, was unable to make any progress
with the Spaniards, and supporting the European Protestants drained his
revenue. By 1624 royal indebtedness had reached £1 million. The old king
was clearly at the end of his power and influence. His health was
visibly deteriorating, and his policies were openly derided in court and
country. Prince Charles (later Charles I) and Buckingham decided to take
matters into their own hands. In 1623 they traveled incognito to Madrid.

Their gambit created as much consternation in England as it did in
Spain. James wept inconsolably, believing that his son would be killed
or imprisoned. The Spaniards saw the end of their purposely drawn-out
negotiations. Every effort was made to keep Charles away from the
infanta, and he only managed to catch two fleeting glimpses of the
heavily veiled princess. Nevertheless, he confided in Buckingham that he
was hopelessly in love. Buckingham and John Digby, earl of Bristol, the
ambassador to Spain, were almost powerless to prevent the most damaging
concessions. Charles even confessed himself willing to be instructed in
the Catholic faith. Yet the more the prince conceded, the more
embarrassed the Spaniards became. Nothing short of an ultimate Catholic
reestablishment in England would be satisfactory, and they began to
raise obviously artificial barriers. Even the lovesick prince realized
that he was being humiliated. Shame turned to rage as he and Buckingham
journeyed home.

There they persuaded the bedridden king to call another Parliament
for the purpose of declaring war on Spain. The Parliament of 1624 was
given free rein. All manner of legislation was passed; subsidies for a
trade war with Spain were voted; and issues of foreign policy were
openly discussed. Firmly in control of political decision making,
Charles and Buckingham worked to stave off attacks on James’s fiscal
policies, especially the granting of monopolies to royal favourites. The
last Parliament of James’s reign was his most successful. On March 27,
1625, the old king died.

Charles I (1625–49)

Father and son could hardly be more different than were James and
Charles. Charles was shy and physically deformed. He had a speech defect
that made his pronouncements painful for him and his audiences alike.
Charles had not been raised to rule. His childhood had been spent in the
shadow of his brother, Prince Henry, who had died in 1612, and Charles
had little practical experience of government. He was introverted and
clung tenaciously to a few intimates. His wife, Henrietta Maria—French,
Roman Catholic, and hugely unpopular—received Charles’s loyalty despite
great political cost. So did Buckingham, who survived the change in
monarchs and consolidated his grip on government.

The politics of warAlong with his kingdom, Charles I inherited a domestic economic crisis
and the war with Spain. A series of bad grain harvests, continued
dislocation of the cloth trade, and a virulent plague that killed tens
of thousands all conspired against the new king. Under the pressure of
economic crisis, members of the Parliament of 1625 were determined to
reform the customs and to limit the crown’s right to levy impositions.
The traditional lifelong grant of tonnage and poundage was thus withheld
from Charles so that reform could be considered. But reform was delayed,
and, despite the appearance of illegality, the king collected these
levies to prevent bankruptcy.

The Spanish war progressed no better than the domestic economy.
Buckingham organized an expedition to Cádiz, but its failure forced
Charles to summon another Parliament. From the start the Parliament of
1626 was badly managed, and members of both houses thirsted for
Buckingham’s blood. Where James had sacrificed his ministers to further
policy, Charles would not. Parliament was dissolved without granting any
subsidies.

Charles now fell back upon desperate remedies. All his predecessors
had collected “forced loans” at times of imminent crisis when there was
no time to await parliamentary elections, returns, and the vote of
subsidies. It was widely accepted that the king must have discretion to
require loans from his subjects in such circumstances—loans that were
routinely converted into grants when the next Parliament met. What was
unprecedented was the collection of forced loans to replace lost
parliamentary subsidies. The £260,000 Charles collected in 1627 was
precisely the sum he had turned down when it was made conditional upon
his surrender of Buckingham to the wrath of the Commons. But he
collected it at a heavy price: Charles was compelled to lock up 180
refusers, including many prominent gentry. However, he refused to show
cause for his imprisonment of five leading knights, controversially
relying on a rarely used discretionary power to arrest “by special
commandment” those suspected of crimes it was not in the general
interest to make public—a contingency normally used to nip conspiracies
in the bud. The inevitable result was furor in the next Parliament, to
which he again had to go cap in hand because he was desperate for money
to fund simultaneous naval wars against the two superpowers, France and
Spain. Lawyers, such as Sir Edward Coke, and country gentlemen, such as
Sir John Eliot, now feared that the common law insufficiently protected
their lives and liberties. This sentiment was compounded by the fact
that soldiers were being billeted in citizens’ homes; local militias
were forced to raise, equip, and transport men to fight abroad; and
provost marshals declared martial law in peaceful English communities.

Yet the extremity of these expedients was matched by the seriousness
of the international situation. Incredibly, England was now at war with
both France and Spain, and Buckingham was determined to restore his
reputation. Instead, the campaign of 1627 was a disaster, and the duke’s
landing at the Île de Ré a debacle. It was hard to see how Charles could
protect him from his critics once the Parliament of 1628–29 assembled.

The defeats of 1627 made emergency taxation more necessary than ever,
and the new Parliament, 27 of whose members had been imprisoned for
refusing to contribute to the loan, assembled with a sense of profound
disquiet. It was proposed to grant the king five subsidies for defense
but to delay their passage until the Petition of Right (1628) could be
prepared. The petition asserted four liberties: freedom from arbitrary
arrest, freedom from nonparliamentary taxation, freedom from the
billeting of troops, and freedom from martial law. Couched in the
language of tradition, it was presented to the king as a restatement of
ancient liberties. In this spirit he accepted it, more in hope of
receiving his subsidies than in fear that the petition would restrain
his actions.

Between the two sessions of this Parliament, the duke of Buckingham
was assassinated (Aug. 23, 1628). While the king wept in his palace,
people drank to the health of the assassin in the streets; Buckingham
had become a symbol of all that was wrong in the country. But with the
king’s favourite removed, there was a void in government. Buckingham had
been in charge of military and domestic policy, and there was no one
else who had the confidence of the king or the ability to direct the
royal program. When Charles I, grief-stricken, attempted to manage the
second session of Parliament by himself, all the tensions came to a
head. In the Commons some members wanted to challenge violations of the
Petition of Right, especially the continued collection of tonnage and
poundage without parliamentary authority. Others were equally agitated
about changes in religious policy caused by the emergence of
Arminianism. When the level of bitterness reached new heights, the king
decided to end the session. But before he could do so, two hotheaded
members physically restrained the speaker while the Three Resolutions
(1629), condemning the collection of tonnage and poundage as well as the
doctrine and practice of Arminianism, were introduced. Parliament broke
up in pandemonium, with both king and members shocked by the “carriage
of diverse fiery spirits.”

Peace and reformThe dissolution of the Parliament of 1628 in 1629 and the king’s clear
intention to govern for a period without this troublesome institution
necessitated a reversal of policy. Over the next two years, peace
treaties ended England’s fruitless involvement in continental warfare in
which more than £2 million had been wasted and royal government brought
into disrepute. The king was also able to pacify his subjects by
launching a campaign of administrative and fiscal reform that finally
allowed the crown to live within its own revenues. Customs increased to
£500,000 as both European and North American trade expanded. Under
capable ministers such as Richard Weston, earl of Portland, prerogative
income also increased. Ancient precedents were carefully searched to
ensure that the crown received its full and lawful dues. Fines were
imposed on those who had not come forward to be knighted at the king’s
accession. These distraints of knighthood yielded more than £170,000.
The boundaries of royal forests were resurveyed and encroachers fined.
Fees in the court of wards were raised and procedures streamlined. With
effort and application annual royal revenue reached £1 million.

The most important of Charles’s fiscal schemes was not technically a
design to squeeze monies into the royal coffers. While the king’s own
rights might underwrite the needs of government, they could do nothing
toward maintaining the navy, England’s sole military establishment.
Thus, Charles expanded the collection of ship money, an ancient levy by
which revenue was raised for the outfitting of warships. Although ship
money was normally only collected in the ports in times of emergency,
Charles extended it to inland communities and declared pirates a
national menace. At first there was little resistance to the collection
of ship money, but, as it was levied year after year, questions about
its legitimacy were raised. The case of John Hampden (1637) turned upon
the king’s emergency powers and divided the royal judges, who narrowly
decided for the crown. But legal opinion varied so significantly that
revenue dropped, and the stirring of a taxpayer revolt could be felt.

Religious reformFears about the state of the church, which erupted at the end of the
Parliament of 1628, had been building for several years. Charles had
become drawn to a movement of church reform that aroused deep hostility
among his Calvinist subjects. The doctrines of predestination and
justification by faith alone formed the core of beliefs in the
traditional English church. Yet slowly competing doctrines of free will
and the importance of works along with faith, advocated by the Dutch
theologian Jacobus Arminius, spread to the English church. Arminians
were viewed as radical reformers despite the fact that their leaders
were elevated to the highest positions in church government. In 1633
William Laud, one of the ablest of the Arminians, became archbishop of
Canterbury. Laud stressed ceremony over preaching. He believed in the
“beauty of holiness” and introduced measures to decorate churches and to
separate the communion table from the congregation. Both of these
practices were reminiscent of Roman Catholicism, and they came at a time
when Protestants everywhere feared for the survival of their religion.
Nor did it help that the queen openly attended mass along with some
highly placed converted courtiers. Anti-popery was the single strain
that had united the diverse elements of Protestant reform, and it was
now a rallying cry against innovations at home rather than abominations
abroad.

But perhaps Laud’s greatest offense was to promote the authority of
the clergy in general and of the bishops in particular, against the
laity. He challenged head-on the central thrust of the English
Reformation: the assault on the institutional wealth and power of the
church as a clerical corporation. He wanted to restore the authority of
the church courts and threatened to excommunicate the king’s judges if
they persisted in trying cases that belonged to ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. He also tried to restore the value of tithes and prevent
the misappropriation of churchyards for secular purposes. Moreover, he
sought to penalize those who did not pay the (much-enhanced) levies for
the refurbishment of church buildings. Menacingly, in Scotland and
Ireland (as a prelude, many assumed, to actions to come in England) he
tried to renegotiate by a policy of surrender the terms on which all
former monastic and cathedral lands were held. In all this he appeared
to act more like an aggressive papal nuncio than a compliant appointee
of the royal supreme governor of the church, and Charles I’s purring
complaisance in Laud’s activities was unendurable to most of his
subjects. The master of Westminster School was whipped in front of his
pupils for saying of Laud that, like “a busie, angry wasp, his sting is
in the tayl of everything.” Others were flogged through the streets of
London or had their ears cut off for “libeling” Laud and his work. He
alienated not only everyone with a Puritan scruple but everyone with a
strong sense of the supremacy of common law or with an inherited
suspicion of clerical pride. No wonder the archbishop had so few friends
by 1640.

His program extended to Ireland and—especially disastrously—to
Scotland. Without consulting Parliament, the General Assembly, the
Scottish bishops in conclave, or even the Scottish Privy Council, but
rather by royal diktat, Laud ordered the introduction of new canons, a
new ordinal, and a new prayer book based not on the English prayer book
of 1559 but on the more ceremonialist and crypto-Catholic English prayer
book of 1549. This was met by riot and, eventually, rebellion. Vast
numbers of Scots bound themselves passively to disobey the “unlawful”
religious innovations. Charles I decided to use force to compel them,
and he twice sought to use troops raised by a loyal (largely Catholic)
Scottish minority, troops from Ireland, and troops from England to
achieve this end.

The Bishops’ Wars (1639–40) brought an end to the tranquillity of the
1630s. Charles had to meet rebellion with force, and force required
money from Parliament. He genuinely believed that he would be supported
against the rebels, failing to comprehend the profound hostility that
Laud’s innovations had created in England. The Short Parliament (1640)
lasted less than a month before the king dissolved it rather than permit
an extended discussion of his inadequacies. He scraped some money
together and placed his troops under the command of his able and
ruthless deputy, Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford. But English troops
fighting for pay proved no match for Scottish troops fighting for
religion. In 1640 the Scots invaded England and captured Newcastle, the
vital source of London’s coal. Charles was forced to accept a
humiliating treaty whereby he paid for the upkeep of the Scottish army
and agreed to call another Parliament.

The Long Parliament With his circumstances more desperate than ever, Charles I summoned
Parliament to meet in November 1640. The king faced a body profoundly
mistrustful of his intentions. The reform movement in the Commons was
led by John Pym, a minor Somerset landowner, who was prominent by his
oratorical skills in debate and his political skills in committee. Pym
was a moderate, and for the next three years he ably steered compromises
between those who wanted too much and those who would settle for too
little. In the Lords, Viscount Saye and Sele and the earl of Warwick and
the earl of Bedford worked in tandem with Pym and his allies, leading or
following as occasion required.

The Long Parliament (1640–53) opened with the imprisonment of
Strafford and Laud, the architects of the Scottish fiasco. Strafford was
put on trial and ultimately attainted for treason. The dubious legality
of the charges against him forced the Commons to proceed by bill rather
than impeachment, and thus both the House of Lords and the monarch had
to approve the charge. The Lords were cowed by crowds of angry London
citizens and apprentices and Charles by the mistaken belief that
Strafford’s blood would placate his opponents. But Strafford’s execution
in May was just the beginning.

In fact, parliamentary reform took two different tacks. The first was
to limit the king’s constitutional authority in order to protect the
existence of Parliament and the liberties of subjects. The second was to
reconstitute the church. In February the Triennial Act (1641) was
passed, mandating the summoning of Parliament every three years. In May
the king’s power to dissolve the Long Parliament was removed. Charles
was forced to accept both bills. Meanwhile, the Commons relentlessly
investigated the legal basis of the king’s fiscal expedients, amending
the laws that Charles had so scrupulously followed. Ship money and
distraints of knighthood were declared illegal, royal forests were
defined, and the prerogative courts of High Commission and Star Chamber
were abolished. Again the king acceded.

Church reform proved more treacherous. Parliamentary leaders agreed
that Charles and Laud had introduced intolerable innovations, but where
some were satisfied by their removal, others wished that they be
replaced by even greater novelties. In December 1640 an orchestrated
petitioning campaign called upon Parliament to abolish episcopacy, root
and branch. Pym and his supporters were as yet unwilling to propose such
a sweeping change, fearing lest it divide the Commons and create a
crisis with the Lords. Nevertheless, the equally radical proposal to
remove the bishops from the upper house was passed in May, and, when the
Lords rejected it, the Commons responded with the Root and Branch Bill.

Pym’s fear that the religious issue might break apart the
parliamentary consensus was compounded by his fear of provoking the king
to counterattack. Throughout the first six months of the session,
Charles had meekly followed Parliament’s lead. But there were ominous
signs that the worm would turn. His leading advisers, the queen among
them, were searching for military options. The radical attack upon the
church allowed the king to portray himself as the conservator of “the
pure religion of Queen Elizabeth and King James” without “any connivance
of popery or innovation”—a coded repudiation of Laudianism and
Arminianism. Week by week, sympathy for the king was growing, and in
August Charles determined to conclude a peace treaty with the Scots.
This successful negotiation removed the crisis that had brought the Long
Parliament into being. When Charles returned to London at the end of
November, he was met by cheering crowds and a large body of members of
the two houses, who were unaware that he had been behind a failed
attempt to arrest the leading conservator and overturn the Scottish
settlement.

While the king resolved one crisis in Scotland, another emerged in
Ireland. Catholics, stung by the harsh repression of Strafford’s rule
and by the threat of plantation and of the direct rule from England
planned by the Long Parliament, rose against their Protestant overlords
and slaughtered thousands in a bloody rebellion. Though the reality was
grim enough, the exaggerated reports that reached London seemed to
fulfill the worst fears of a popish plot. Urgently an army had to be
raised, but only the king had military authority, and in the present
circumstance he could not be trusted with a force that might be used in
London rather than Londonderry. In despair over the situation in Ireland
and deeply suspicious of the king’s intentions, the leaders of the Long
Parliament debated the Grand Remonstrance, a catalog of their grievances
against the king.

The Grand Remonstrance (1641) divided the Commons as nothing else
had. It passed by only 11 votes, and the move to have it printed failed.
Many were appalled that the remonstrance was to be used as propaganda
“to tell stories to the people.” For the first time, members of Commons
began to coalesce into opposing factions of royalists and
parliamentarians.

The passage of the Grand Remonstrance was followed by Pym’s attempt
to transfer control of the militia (the appointment of lords,
lieutenants, military officers, etc.) from the crown to Parliament. The
political situation had reached a state of crisis. In Parliament,
rumours spread of a royal attack upon the houses, and at court wild talk
of an impeachment of the queen was reported. It was Charles who broke
the deadlock. On Jan. 4, 1642, he rode to Westminster intending to
impeach five members of the Commons and one of the Lords on charges of
treason. It was the same device that had already failed in Scotland.
But, because the king’s plan was no secret, the members had already
fled. Thus, Charles’s dramatic breach of parliamentary privilege badly
backfired. He not only failed to obtain his objective but also lost the
confidence of many of the moderates left in Parliament. After ensuring
the safe departure of his wife and children out of the country, Charles
abandoned his capital and headed north.

The initiative had returned to Pym and his allies, who now proceeded
to pass much of their stalled legislation, including the exclusion of
the bishops from the Lords and the Impressment Bill (1642), which
allowed Parliament to raise the army for Ireland. In June a series of
proposals for a treaty, the Nineteen Propositions (1642), was presented
to the king. The proposals called for parliamentary control over the
militia, the choice of royal counselors, and religious reform. Charles
rejected them outright, though in his answer he seemed to grant
Parliament a coordinate power in government, making the king but one of
the three estates. The king, however, had determined to settle the
matter by main force. His principal advisers believed that the greatest
lords and gentlemen would rally to their king and that Parliament would
not have the stomach for rebellion. On Aug. 22, 1642, the king raised
his standard bearing the device “Give Caesar His Due.”

Civil war and revolution

The war that began in 1642 was a war within three kingdoms and between
three kingdoms. There was a civil war in Ireland that pitted the
Catholic majority against the Protestant minority, buttressed by English
and Scottish armies. This war festered nastily throughout the 1640s and
was settled only by a devastating use of force and terror by Oliver
Cromwell in 1649–50 and his successors in 1651–54. Whenever they were in
the ascendancy, the Catholic Irish were willing to send armies into
England to assist Charles I, on condition that he give them religious
freedom and effective control of the political institutions of the Irish
kingdom. After the Cromwellian conquest, the English set out to destroy
the power and wealth of the Catholic elite—at one point even proposing
to transport every native Catholic from 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland
into the western region comprising the 5 counties of Connacht and County
Clare; in the event, they settled for a confiscation of two-fifths of
the land and its redistribution to Protestant Englishmen.

Scotland also was embroiled in civil war, but, at one time or
another, all the groups involved demonstrated a willingness to send
armies into England. The Anglo-Scottish wars were fought from 1643 to
1646, resumed from 1648 to 1651, and resulted in an English military
occupation and complete political subjugation (the incorporation of
Scotland into an enhanced English state) that lasted until the
Restoration in 1660.

And then there was the English Civil War that began in 1642, a war
that neither king, Parliament, nor the country wanted. It was a war that
was as dangerous to win as to lose. The parliamentarians could only
maintain the fiction that they were fighting to “preserve the safety of
the king,” as the commission of their commander, Robert Devereux, earl
of Essex, stated. The king’s fiction was that he was opposing a
rebellion. Most of the country remained neutral, hoping that differences
would be composed and fighting ended.

The first years of war were as halfhearted as these justifications.
Parliament held the tactical advantages of controlling the navy and
London. While the navy protected the coast from foreign invasion, London
provided the funds and manpower for battle. The king held the strategic
advantage of knowing that he had to recapture his capital. He relied
upon the aristocracy for men and arms. In the first substantial
engagement of the war, the Battle of Edgehill (1642), Charles’s cavalry
proved superior to Parliament’s, and he followed this first encounter by
marching on the capital. At Brentford (1642), on the outskirts of
London, the City militia narrowly averted the king’s triumph. For the
next two years, however, the war was fought to a desultory standstill.

Almost from the beginning, the members of Parliament were divided
over their goals. A war group argued that Charles could not be trusted
until he learned the lesson of military defeat. A peace group countered
that the longer the war ground on, the less likely Charles would be to
compromise. Both of these groups were loose coalitions, and neither of
them dominated parliamentary politics. Until his death in 1643, Pym
steered a course between them, supporting the Oxford Propositions (1643)
for peace as well as creating the administrative machinery to raise and
finance armies. The excise, modeled on impositions, and the monthly
assessments, modeled on ship money, increased levels of taxation to new
heights. The king burdened the communities his forces controlled just as
heavily.

In 1643 the war widened. Charles negotiated a cease-fire with the
Catholic rebels in Ireland that allowed him to bring Irish troops to
England. Parliament negotiated the Solemn League and Covenant (1643)
with the Scots, who brought an army to England in return for guarantees
of a presbyterian church establishment. Initially Parliament benefited
most. A combination of English and Scottish troops defeated royalist
forces at the Battle of Marston Moor (1644) and took York. But
ultimately religious differences between Scottish Presbyterians and
English Independents vitiated the alliance. As the parliamentary
commanders bickered, their forces were defeated at Lostwithiel (1644)
and Newbury (1644). While another round of peace negotiations began, the
unsuccessful Uxbridge Proposals (1645), Parliament recast its military
establishment and formed the New Model Army.

There was little new about the New Model Army other than
centralization. Remnants of three armies were combined to be directed by
a parliamentary committee. This committee included the parliamentary
generals who were displaced by the Self-Denying Ordinance (1645), an act
that excluded members of Parliament from civil and military office. The
New Model Army was commanded by Thomas Fairfax, Baron Fairfax, and
eventually the cavalry was led by Lieut. Gen. Oliver Cromwell.

The new parliamentary army was thought so weak that the king hoped to
crush it in a single blow and thus end the war. Instead, the Battle of
Naseby on June 14, 1645, delivered the decisive blow to the royalists.
Even though the parliamentary forces only just managed to carry the day
despite their numerical superiority, their victory was decisive. It
destroyed the king’s main armies and left open a path to the west, where
his other substantial forces were defeated at Langport (1645). The
following year, the king surrendered to the Scots, erroneously believing
that they would strike a better bargain.

For four years the political divisions at Westminster had been held
in check by the military emergency. But the king’s defeat released all
restraints. In Parliament coherent parties began to form around the
religious poles provided by Presbyterians and Independents and around
the political poles of peace and war. Denzil Holles, one of the five
members of Parliament Charles had tried to arrest in 1642, came to head
the most powerful group. He pushed through a presbyterian church
settlement, negotiated a large loan from the City of London, and used
the money to ransom the king from the Scots. Holles’s peace plan was to
remove the main points of difference between king and Parliament by
disbanding the army and settling the disputes about the church, the
militia, and the rebellion in Ireland. His party was opposed by a group
led by Sir Henry Vane the Younger and Oliver Cromwell, who desired
toleration for Independents and were fearful of disbanding the army
before an agreement was reached with Charles I.

But war weariness in both Parliament and the country swept all before
it. In January 1647 Charles was returned to English custody, and Holles
moved forward with his plan to send a portion of the army to Ireland,
assign a small force to English garrisons, and disband the rest. But in
this he reckoned without the army. In the rank and file, concern about
arrears of pay, indemnity, and liability for impressment stirred the
soldiers to resist Irish service. A movement that began over material
grievances soon turned political as representatives were chosen from the
rank and file to present demands through their officers to Parliament.
Holles attempted to brush this movement aside and push through his
disbandment scheme. At this the army rose up, driving out those of its
officers who supported the disbandment, seizing Charles at Holmby House
on June 3 and demanding the impeachment of Holles and his main
supporters. At the beginning of August 1647, the army marched into
London, and Holles, with 10 of his allies, fled the capital.

The army’s intervention transformed civil war into revolution.
Parliament, which in 1646 had argued that it was the fundamental
authority in the country, by 1647 was but a pawn in a new game of power
politics. The perceived corruption of Parliament made it, like the king,
a target of reform. Initiative was now in the hands of the king and the
army, and Charles I tried to entice Cromwell and Henry Ireton, the
army’s leading strategist, to bargain his restoration for a tolerant
church settlement. But the officers were only one part of a politicized
army that was bombarded with plans for reorganizing the state. Among the
most potent plans were those of the Levelers, led by John Lilburne, who
desired that a new compact between ruler and ruled, the Agreement of the
People (1647), be made. This was debated by the council of the army at
Putney in October. The Levelers’ proposals, which had much in common
with the army’s, called for the reform of Parliament through elections
based upon a broad franchise and for a generally tolerant church
settlement. Turmoil in the army led Fairfax and Cromwell to reassert
military discipline, while the machinations of Charles led to the second
Civil War (1648).

Charles had now managed to join his English supporters with
discontented Scots who opposed the army’s intervention in politics.
Though the fighting was brief, it was bloody. Fairfax stormed Colchester
(1648) and executed the ringleaders of the English rebellion, and
Cromwell and several New Model regiments defeated the invading Scots at
the Battle of Preston (1648).

The second Civil War hardened attitudes in the army. The king was
directly blamed for the unnecessary loss of life, and for the first time
alternatives to Charles Stuart, “that man of blood,” were openly
contemplated. Parliament too was appalled by the renewal of fighting.
Moderate members believed that there was still a chance to bring the
king to terms, despite the fact that he had rejected treaty after
treaty. While the army made plans to put the king on trial, Parliament
summoned its strength for one last negotiation, the abortive Treaty of
Newport. Even now the king remained intransigent, especially over the
issue of episcopacy. New negotiations infuriated the army, because it
believed that Parliament would sell out its sacrifices and compromise
its ideals. On Dec. 6, 1648, army troops, under the direction of Col.
Thomas Pride, purged the House of Commons. Forty-five members were
arrested, and 186 were kept away. A rump of about 75 active members were
left to do the army’s bidding. They were to establish a High Court of
Justice, prepare a charge of treason against the king, and place him on
trial in the name of the people of England. Pride’s Purge was a
last-minute compromise made to prevent absolute military rule. With
Cromwell deliberately absent in the north, Ireton was left to stave off
the argument, made by the Levelers, that Parliament was hopelessly
corrupt and should be dissolved. The decision to proceed by trial in the
High Court of Parliament was a decision in favour of constitutional
forms, however much a shadow they had become.

The king’s trial took place at the end of January. The Court of
Justice was composed of members of Parliament, civilians, and army
officers. There was little enthusiasm for the work that had to be done.
No more senior judge than John Bradshaw could be found to preside, and
he wore a hat ringed with iron in fear of assassination. The charges
against the king, however politically correct, had little legal basis,
and Charles deftly exposed their weakness. But like Strafford before
him, Charles was to be sacrificed to the law of necessity if not the law
of England. On Jan. 30, 1649, at the wall of his own palace, Charles I
was beheaded. A witness recorded in his diary, “Such a groan went up as
I had never before heard.”

Commonwealth and ProtectorateThe execution of the king aroused hostility not only in England but also
throughout Europe. Regicide was considered the worst of all crimes, and
not even the brilliance of John Milton in The Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates (1649) could persuade either Catholic or Protestant powers
that the execution of Charles I was just. Open season was declared
against English shipping, and Charles II was encouraged to reclaim his
father’s three kingdoms.

Despite opposition and continued external threats, the government of
the Commonwealth was declared in May 1649 after acts had been passed to
abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords. Political power resided in
a Council of State, the Rump Parliament (which swelled from 75 to 213
members in the year following the king’s execution), and the army. The
military was now a permanent part of English government. Though the
soldiers had assigned the complex tasks of reform to Parliament, they
made sure of their ability to intervene in political affairs.

At first, however, the soldiers had other things to occupy them. For
reasons of security and revenge, Ireland had to be pacified. In the
autumn of 1649, Cromwell crossed to Ireland to deal once and for all
with the Irish Confederate rebels. He came first to Drogheda. When the
town refused to surrender, he stormed it and put the garrison of 3,000
to the sword, acting both as the avenger of the massacres of 1641 (“I am
persuaded that this is a righteous judgement of God upon those barbarous
wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood”) and as
a deliberate instrument of terror to induce others to surrender. He
repeated his policy of massacre at Wexford, this time choosing not to
spare the civilian population. These actions had the desired effect, and
most other towns surrendered at Cromwell’s approach. He departed Ireland
after nine months, leaving his successors with only a mopping-up
operation. His reputation at a new high, Cromwell was next put in charge
of dealing with those Scots who had welcomed Charles I’s son, Charles
II, to Scotland and who were soon to crown him at Scone as king of all
of Great Britain and Ireland. Although outnumbered and in a weak
defensive position, Cromwell won a stunning victory in the Battle of
Dunbar on Sept. 3, 1650. A year later to the day, having chased Charles
II and a second Scottish army into England, he gained an overwhelming
victory at Worcester. Charles II barely escaped with his life.

Victorious wars against the Irish, Scots, and Dutch (1652) made the
Commonwealth a feared military power. But the struggle for survival
defined the Rump’s conservative policies. Little was done to reform the
law. An attempt to abolish the court of chancery created chaos in the
central courts. Little agreement could be reached on religious matters,
especially on the vexing question of the compulsory payment of tithes.
The Rump failed both to make long-term provision for a new “national
church” and to define the state’s right to confer and place limits on
the freedom of those who wished to worship and gather outside the
church. Most ominously, nothing at all had been done to set a limit for
the sitting of the Rump and to provide for franchise reform and the
election of a new Parliament. This had been the principal demand of the
army, and the more the Rump protested the difficulty of the problem, the
less patient the soldiers became. In April, when it was clear that the
Rump would set a limit to its sitting but would nominate its own members
to judge new elections, Cromwell marched to Westminster and dissolved
Parliament. The Rump was replaced by an assembly nominated mostly by the
army high command. The Nominated Parliament (1653) was no better able to
overcome its internal divisions or untangle the threads of reform than
the Rump. After five months it dissolved itself and returned power to
Cromwell and the army.

The problems that beset both the Rump and the Nominated Parliament
resulted from the diversity of groups that supported the revolution,
ranging from pragmatic men of affairs, lawyers, officeholders, and local
magistrates whose principal desire was to restore and maintain order to
zealous visionaries who wished to establish heaven on earth. The
republicans, like Sir Henry Vane the Younger, hoped to create a
government based upon the model of ancient Rome and modern Venice. They
were proud of the achievements of the Commonwealth and reviled Cromwell
for dissolving the Rump. But most political reformers based their
programs on dreams of the future rather than the past. They were
millenarians, expecting the imminent Second Coming of Christ. Some were
social reformers, such as Gerrard Winstanley, whose followers, agrarian
communists known as Diggers, believed that the common lands should be
returned to the common people. Others were mystics, such as the Ranters,
led by Laurence Claxton, who believed that they were infused with a holy
spirit that removed sin from even their most reprehensible acts. The
most enduring of these groups were the Quakers (Society of Friends),
whose social radicalism was seen in their refusal to take oaths or doff
their hats and whose religious radicalism was contained in their
emphasis upon inner light. Ultimately, all these groups were persecuted
by successive revolutionary governments, which were continually being
forced to establish conservative limits to individual and collective
behaviour.

The failure of the Nominated Parliament led to the creation of the
first British constitution, the Instrument of Government (1653). Drafted
by Maj. Gen. John Lambert, the Instrument created a lord protector, a
Council of State, and a reformed Parliament that was to be elected at
least once every three years. Cromwell was named protector, and he chose
a civilian-dominated Council to help him govern. The Protectorate
tackled many of the central issues of reform head-on. Commissions were
appointed to study law reform and the question of tithes. Social
legislation against swearing, drunkenness, and stage plays was
introduced. Steps were taken to provide for the training of a godly
ministry, and even a new university at Durham was begun.

But the protector was no better able to manage his Parliaments than
had been the king. The Parliament of 1654 immediately questioned the
entire basis of the newly established government, with the republicans
vigorously disputing the office of lord protector. The Parliament of
1656, despite the exclusion of many known opponents, was no more
pliable. Both were a focus for the manifold discontents of supporters
and opponents of the regime.

Nothing was more central to the Cromwellian experiment than the cause
of religious liberty. Cromwell believed that no one church had a
monopoly on truth and that no one form of government or worship was
necessary or desirable. Moreover, he believed in a loosely federated
national church, with each parish free to worship as it wished within
very broad limits and staffed by a clergy licensed by the state on the
basis of their knowledge of the Bible and the uprightness of their
lives, without reference to their religious beliefs. On the other hand,
Cromwell felt that there should be freedom for “all species of
protestant” to gather if they wished into religious assemblies outside
the national church. He did not believe, however, that religious liberty
was a natural right, but one conferred by the Christian magistrate, who
could place prudential limits on the exercise of that liberty. Thus,
those who claimed that their religion permitted or even promoted
licentiousness and sexual freedom, who denied the Trinity, or who
claimed the right to disrupt the worship of others were subject to
proscription or penalty. Furthermore, for the only time between the
Reformation and the mid-19th century, there was no religious test for
the holding of public office. Although Cromwell made his detestation of
Catholicism very plain, Catholics benefited from the repeal of the laws
requiring attendance at parish churches, and they were less persecuted
for the private exercise of their own faith than at any other time in
the century. Cromwell’s policy of religious tolerance was far from
total, but it was exceptional in the early modern world.

Among opponents, royalists were again active, though by now they were
reduced to secret associations and conspiracies. In the west,
Penruddock’s rising, the most successful of a series of otherwise feeble
royalist actions in March 1655, was effectively suppressed, but Cromwell
reacted by reducing both the standing army and the level of taxation on
all. He also appointed senior army officers “major generals,” raising
ultra-loyal militias from among the demobbed veterans paid for by penal
taxation on all those convicted of active royalism in the previous
decade. The major generals were also charged with superintending “a
reformation of manners”—the imposition of strict Puritan codes of social
and sexual conduct. They were extremely unpopular, and, despite their
effectiveness, the offices were abolished within a year.

By now it was apparent that the regime was held together by Cromwell
alone. Within his personality resided the contradictions of the
revolution. Like the gentry, he desired a fixed and stable constitution,
but, like the zealous, he was infused with a millenarian vision of a
more glorious world to come (see millennialism). As a member of
Parliament from 1640, he respected the fundamental authority that
Parliament represented, but, as a member of the army, he understood
power and the decisive demands of necessity. In the 1650s many wished
him to become king, but he refused the crown, preferring the authority
of the people to the authority of the sword. When he died in 1658, all
hope of continued reform died with him.

For a time, Richard Cromwell was elevated to his father’s titles and
dignity, but he was no match in power or skill. The republicans and the
army officers who had fought Oliver tooth and nail now hoped to use his
son to dismantle the civil government that under the Humble Petition and
Advice (1657) had come to resemble nothing so much as the old monarchy.
An upper House of Lords had been created, and the court at Whitehall was
every bit as ceremonious as that of the Stuarts. While some demanded
that the Rump be restored to power, others clamoured for the selection
of a new Parliament on the basis of the old franchise, and this took
place in 1659. By then there was a vacuum of power at the centre;
Richard Cromwell, incapable of governing, simply left office. A
rebellion of junior officers led to the reestablishment of the Rump.

But all was confusion. The Rump was incapable of governing without
financial support from the City and military support from the army. Just
as in 1647, the City demanded military disbandment and the army demanded
satisfaction of its material grievances. But the army was no longer a
unified force. Contentions among the senior officers led to an attempt
to arrest Lambert, and the widely scattered regiments had their own
grievances to propound. The most powerful force was in Scotland,
commanded by George Monck, once a royalist and now one of the ablest of
the army’s senior officers. When one group of officers determined to
dissolve the Rump, Monck marched his forces south, determined to restore
it. Arriving in London, Monck quickly realized that the Rump could never
govern effectively and that only the restoration of Charles II could put
an end to the political chaos that now gripped the state. In February
1660 Monck reversed Pride’s Purge, inviting all of the secluded members
of the Long Parliament to return to their seats under army protection. A
month later the Long Parliament dissolved itself, paving the way for the
return of the king.

The later Stuarts

Charles II (1660–85)

The Restoration Charles II arrived in London on the 30th birthday of what had already
been a remarkably eventful life. He came of age in Europe, a child of
diplomatic intrigues, broken promises, and unfulfilled hopes. By
necessity he had developed a thick skin and a shrewd political realism.
This was displayed in the Declaration of Breda (1660), in which Charles
offered something to everyone in his terms for resuming government. A
general pardon would be issued, a tolerant religious settlement would be
sought, and security for private property would be assured. Never a man
for details, Charles left the specifics to the Convention Parliament
(1660), which was composed of members of the competing religious and
political parties that contended for power amid the rubble of the
Commonwealth.

The Convention declared the restoration of the king and the lords,
disbanded the army, established a fixed income for the king by
maintaining the parliamentary innovation of the excise tax, and returned
to the crown and the bishops their confiscated estates. But it made no
headway on a religious settlement. Despite Charles’s promise of a
limited toleration and his desire to accept Presbyterians into the
Anglican fold as detailed in the Worcester House Declaration (1660),
enthusiasts from both left and right wrecked every compromise.

It was left to the Cavalier Parliament (1661–79) to make the hard
choices and to demonstrate that one of the changes that had survived the
revolution was the independence of Parliament. Despite Charles’s desire
to treat his father’s adversaries leniently and to find a broad church
settlement, the Cavalier Parliament sought to establish a rigid Anglican
orthodoxy. It began the alliance between squire and parson that was to
dominate English local society for centuries. The bishops were returned
to Parliament, a new prayer book was authorized, and repressive acts
were passed to compel conformity. The imposition of oaths of allegiance
and nonresistance to the crown and an oath recognizing the king’s
supremacy in the church upon all members of local government in the
Corporation Act (1661) and then upon the clergy in the Act of Uniformity
(1662) led to a massive purge of officeholders. Town governors were put
out of their places, and nearly one-fifth of all clergymen were deprived
of their livings. Authority in the localities was now firmly in the
hands of the gentry. The Conventicle Act (1664) barred Nonconformists
(Dissenters) from holding separate church services, and the Five Mile
Act (1665) prohibited dispossessed ministers from even visiting their
former congregations.

This program of repressive religious legislation was the first of
many missed opportunities to remove the underlying causes of political
discontent. Though religious dissenters were not a large percentage of
the population, their treatment raised the spectre of permanently
divided local communities and of potentially arbitrary government. This
legislation (the Clarendon Code) is inappropriately associated with the
name of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, for he, as well as the king, realized
the dangers of religious repression and attempted to soften its effects.
Indeed, in central government the king relied upon men of diverse
political backgrounds and religious beliefs. Clarendon, who had lived
with the king in exile, was his chief political adviser, and Charles’s
brother James, duke of York (later James II), was his closest confidant
and was entrusted with the vital post of lord admiral. Monck, who had
made the restoration possible, was raised to duke of Albemarle and
continued to hold military authority over the small standing army that,
for the first time in English history, the king maintained.

War and governmentCharles II could not undo the effects of the revolution, but they were
not all negative. The Commonwealth had had to fight for its survival,
and in the process England had become a potent military power. Wars
against France and Spain had expanded English colonial dominions.
Dunkirk and Jamaica were seized, Barbados was colonized, and the North
American colonies flourished. Colonial trade was an important source of
royal revenue, and Charles II continued Cromwell’s policy of restricting
trade to English ships and imposing duties on imports and exports. The
Navigation Acts (1660 and 1663) were directed against the Dutch, still
the most powerful commercial force in Europe. The Cromwellian Navigation
Act (1651) had resulted in the first Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54), and
Charles’s policy had the same effect. In military terms the Dutch Wars
(1665–67; 1672–74) were a standoff, but in economic terms they were an
English triumph (see Anglo-Dutch Wars). The American colonies were
consolidated by the capture of New York, and the policy of the
Navigation Acts was effectively established. Colonial trade and English
shipping mushroomed.

In the long run Charles’s spasmodically aggressive foreign policy
solved the crown’s perpetual fiscal crises. But in the short run it made
matters worse. The Great Plague of London (1664–66) and the Great Fire
of London (1666) were interpreted as divine judgments against a sinful
nation. These catastrophes were compounded when the Dutch burned a large
portion of the English fleet in 1667, which led to the dismissal and
exile of Clarendon. The crown’s debts led to the Stop of the Exchequer
(1672), by which Charles suspended payment of his bills. The king now
ruled through a group of ministers known as the Cabal, an anagram of the
first letters of their names. None of the five was Anglican, and two
were Roman Catholic.

Charles had wearied of repressive Anglicanism, underestimating its
strength among rural gentry and clergy, and desired comprehension and
toleration in his church. This fit with his foreign-policy objectives,
for in the Treaty of Dover (1670) he allied himself with Catholic France
against Protestant Holland. In exchange he received a large subsidy from
Louis XIV and, in the treaty’s secret clauses, known only to the king’s
Catholic ministers, the promise of an even larger one if Charles
undertook, at some unspecified moment, to declare himself a Catholic.
That moment came for the king on his deathbed, by which time his brother
and heir, the duke of York, had already openly professed his conversion.
In 1672 Charles promulgated the Declaration of Indulgence, which
suspended the penal code against all religious Nonconformists, Catholic
and Dissenter alike. But a declaration of toleration could not bring
together these mortal enemies, and the king found himself faced by a
unified Protestant front. Parliamentary Anglicans would not vote money
for war until the declaration was abrogated. The passage of the Test Act
(1673), which the king reluctantly signed, effectively barred all but
Anglicans from holding national office and forced the duke of York to
resign the admiralty.

The Popish Plot Anti-Catholicism united the disparate elements of English Protestantism
as did nothing else. Anglicans vigorously persecuted the Protestant
sects, especially Quakers and Baptists, who were imprisoned by the
thousands whenever the government claimed to have discovered a radical
plot. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), which became one of the
most popular works in the English language, was composed in jail. Yet
dissenters held out against persecution and continued to make their
converts in towns and cities. They railed against the debauchery of
court life, naming the duke of York, whose shotgun wedding had
scandalized even his own family, and the king himself, who acknowledged
17 bastard children but did not produce one legitimate heir. Most of all
they feared a Catholic revival, which by the late 1670s was no paranoid
delusion. The alliance with Catholic France and rumours of the secret
treaty, the open conversion of the duke of York, heir to the throne, and
the king’s efforts to suspend the laws against Catholic officeholders
were potent signs.

Not even the policy of Charles’s new chief minister, Thomas Osborne,
earl of Danby, could stem the tide of suspicion. An Anglican, Danby
tried to move the crown back into alliance with the majority of country
gentry, who wanted the enforcement of the penal code and the end of the
pro-French foreign policy. He arranged the marriage of Mary (later Mary
II), the eldest daughter of the duke of York, to William of Orange
(later William III), the Dutch stadtholder. Yet, like the king, Danby
admired Louis XIV and the French style of monarchy. He attempted to
manage Parliament, centralize crown patronage, shore up royal finance,
and maintain a standing army—in short, to build a base for royal
absolutism. Catholicism and absolutism were so firmly linked in the
popular mind that Danby was soon tarred by this broad brush. In 1678 a
London Dissenter named Titus Oates revealed evidence of a plot by the
Jesuits to murder the king and establish Roman Catholicism in England.
Although both the evidence and the plot were a total fabrication,
England was quickly swept up in anti-Catholic hysteria. The murder of
the Protestant magistrate who had first heard Oates’s revelations lent
credence to a tissue of lies. Thirty-five alleged conspirators in the
Popish Plot were tried and executed, harsh laws against Catholics were
revived and extended, and Danby’s political position was undermined when
it was revealed that he had been in secret negotiation with the French.
Parliament voted his impeachment and began to investigate the clauses of
the Anglo-French treaties. A second Test Act (1678) was passed, barring
all but Anglicans from Parliament, and an exception for the duke of York
to sit in the Lords was carried by only two votes. After 18 years
Charles II dissolved the Cavalier Parliament.

The exclusion crisis and the Tory reactionThe mass hysteria that resulted from the Popish Plot also had its
effects on the country’s governors. When Parliament assembled in 1679, a
bill was introduced to exclude the duke of York from the throne. This
plunged the state into its most serious political crisis since the
revolution. But, unlike his father, Charles II reacted calmly and
decisively. First he co-opted the leading exclusionists, including the
earl of Shaftesbury, the earl of Halifax, and the earl of Essex, into
his government, and then he offered a plan for safeguarding the church
during his brother’s reign. But when the Commons passed the Exclusion
Bill, Charles dissolved Parliament and called new elections. These did
not change the mood of the country, for in the second Exclusion
Parliament (1679) the Commons also voted to bypass the duke of York in
favour of his daughter Mary and William of Orange, though this was
rejected by the Lords. Again Parliament was dissolved, again the king
appealed to the country, and again an unyielding Parliament met at
Oxford (1681). By now the king had shown his determination and had
frightened the local elites into believing that there was danger of
another civil war. The Oxford Parliament was dissolved in a week, the
“Whig” (Scottish Gaelic: “Horse Thief”) councillors, as they were now
called, were dismissed from their places, and the king appealed directly
to the country for support.

The king also appealed to his cousin Louis XIV, who feared exclusion
as much as Charles did, if for different reasons. Louis provided a large
annual subsidy to increase Charles’s already plentiful revenues, which
had grown with English commerce. Louis also encouraged him to strike out
against the Whigs. An attempt to impeach the earl of Shaftesbury was
foiled only because a Whig grand jury refused to return an indictment.
But the earl was forced into exile in Holland, where he died in 1683.
The king next attacked the government of London, calling in its charter
and reorganizing its institutions so that “Tories” (Irish: “Thieving
Outlaws”), as his supporters were now called, held power. Quo warranto
proceedings against the charters of many urban corporations followed,
forcing surrenders and reincorporations that gave the crown the ability
to replace disloyal local governors. (See Whig and Tory.)

In 1683 government informants named the earl of Essex, Lord William
Russell, and Algernon Sidney as conspirators in the Rye House Plot, a
plan to assassinate the king. Though the evidence was flimsy, Russell
and Sidney were executed and Essex took his own life. There was hardly a
murmur of protest when Charles II failed to summon a Parliament in 1684,
as he was bound to do by the Triennial Act. He was now fully master of
his state—financially independent of Parliament and politically secure,
with loyal Tory servants predominating in local and national government.
He died in 1685 at the height of his power.

James II (1685–88)

Church and kingUnlike his brother, James II did not dissimulate for the sake of policy.
He dealt plainly with friend and foe alike. James did not desire to
establish Catholicism or absolutism and offered ironclad guarantees for
the preservation of the Anglican church. He did desire better treatment
for his coreligionists and the repeal of the Test Acts. James came to
the throne amid declarations of loyalty from the ruling elite. The
Parliament of 1685 was decidedly royalist, granting the king customs
revenues for life as well as emergency military aid to suppress
Monmouth’s Rebellion (1685). James Scott, duke of Monmouth, an
illegitimate son of Charles II, was Shaftesbury’s personal choice for
the throne had Exclusion succeeded. Monmouth recruited tradesmen and
farmers as he marched through the west country on the way to defeat at
the Battle of Sedgemoor. The rebellion was a fiasco, as the local gentry
refused to sanction civil war. Monmouth was executed, and more than 600
of his supporters were either hanged or deported in the brutal aftermath
of the rebellion, the Bloody Assizes (1685).

The king misinterpreted Monmouth’s failure to mean that the country
would place the legitimate succession above all else. During the
rebellion, James had dispensed with the Test Act and appointed Catholics
to military command. This led to a confrontation with Parliament, but
the king’s dispensing power was upheld in Godden v. Hales (1686). James
made it clear that he intended to maintain his large military
establishment, to promote Catholics to positions of leadership, and to
dispense with the penal code.

These decisions could hardly have come at a worse moment. In France
Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, the legislation that had
protected the rights of French Protestants for nearly a century. The
repression of Huguenot congregations inflamed English public opinion.
Thus, the king’s effort on behalf of Catholics was doomed from the
start. He had vainly hoped the Parliament of 1685 would repeal the Test
Acts. When his attempt to open the universities to Catholics was met by
rigid opposition, he forced a Catholic head upon Magdelan College,
Oxford, but only after an open break with the fellows and unpleasant
publicity. Moreover, his effort to forge an alliance with Dissenters
proved unsuccessful. When James showed favour to William Penn and the
Quakers, his leading Anglican ministers, Henry Hyde, earl of Clarendon,
and Lawrence Hyde, earl of Rochester, resigned.

By now the king was set upon a collision course with his natural
supporters. The Tory interest was made up of solid support for church
and king; it was James’s mistake to believe that they would support one
without the other. In 1687 he reissued the Declaration of Indulgence,
which suspended the penal laws against Catholics and Dissenters. This
was a temporary measure, for James hoped that his next Parliament would
repeal the penal code in its entirety. To that end he began a systematic
investigation of the parliamentary boroughs. Agents were sent to
question mayors, lieutenants, and justices of the peace about their
loyalty to the regime and their willingness to vote for members of
Parliament (MPs) who would repeal the Test Acts. Most gave temporizing
answers, but those who stood out were purged from their places. For the
first time in English history, the crown was undertaking to pack
Parliament.

The Revolution of 1688

The final crisis of James’s reign resulted from two related events. The
first was the refusal of seven bishops to instruct the clergy of their
dioceses to read the Declaration of Indulgence in their churches. The
king was so infuriated by this unexpected check to his plans that he had
the bishops imprisoned, charged with seditious libel, and tried.
Meanwhile, in June 1688 Queen Mary (Mary of Modena) gave birth to a male
heir, raising the prospect that there would be a Catholic successor to
James. When the bishops were triumphantly acquitted by a London jury,
leaders of all political groups within the state were persuaded that the
time had come to take action. Seven leading Protestants drafted a
carefully worded invitation for William of Orange to come to England to
investigate the circumstances of the birth of the king’s heir. In
effect, the leaders of the political nation had invited a foreign prince
to invade their land.

This came as no surprise to William, who had been contemplating an
invasion since the spring of 1688. William, who was organizing the Grand
Alliance against Louis XIV, needed England as an ally rather than a
rival. All Europe was readying for war in the summer of 1688, and James
had powerful land and sea forces at his disposal to repel William’s
invasion. The crossing, begun on October 19, was a feat of military
genius, however propitious the strong eastern “Protestant wind” that
kept the English fleet at anchor while Dutch ships landed at Torbay
(November 5). William took Exeter and issued a declaration calling for
the election of a free Parliament. From the beginning, the Anglican
interest flocked to him. James could only watch as parts of his army
melted away.

Yet there was no plan to depose the king. Many Tories hoped that
William’s presence would force James to change his policies; many Whigs
believed that a free Parliament could fetter his excesses. When James
marched out of London, there was even the prospect of battle. But the
result was completely unforeseen. James lost his nerve, sent his family
to France, and followed after them, tossing the Great Seal into the
Thames. James’s flight was a godsend, and, when he was captured en
route, William allowed him to escape again. At the end of December,
William arrived in London, summoned the leading peers and bishops to
help him keep order, and called Parliament into being.

The Convention Parliament (1689) met amid the confusion created by
James’s flight. For some Tories, James II was still the king. Some were
willing to contemplate a regency and others to allow Mary to rule with
William as consort. But neither William nor the Whigs would accept such
a solution. William was to be king in his own right, and in February the
Convention agreed that James had “abdicated the government and that the
throne has thereby become vacant.” At the same time, the leaders of the
Convention prepared the Declaration of Rights to be presented to William
and Mary. The declaration was a restatement of traditional rights, but
the conflicts between Whigs and Tories caused it to be watered down
considerably. Nevertheless, the Whigs did manage to declare the
suspending power and the maintenance of a standing army in peacetime
illegal. But many of the other clauses protecting free speech, free
elections, and frequent Parliaments were cast in anodyne formulas, and
the offer of the throne was not conditional upon the acceptance of the
Declaration of Rights.

William III (1689–1702) and Mary II (1689–94)

The revolution settlementThe Glorious Revolution (the Revolution of 1688) was a constitutional
crisis, which was resolved in England, if not in Scotland and Ireland,
through legislation. The Bill of Rights (1689), a more conservative
document than even the declaration, was passed into law, and it
established the principle that only a Protestant could wear the crown of
England. A new coronation oath required the monarch to uphold
Protestantism and the statutes, laws, and customs of the realm as well.
A Triennial Act (1694) reestablished the principle of regular
parliamentary sessions.

Two other pieces of legislation tackled problems that had vexed the
country since 1640. The Mutiny Act (1689) restrained the monarch’s
control over military forces in England by restricting the use of
martial law. It was passed for one year only; however, when it lapsed
between 1698 and 1701, the crown’s military power was not appreciably
affected. The Toleration Act (1689) was the most disappointing part of
the whole settlement. It was originally intended to be part of a new
comprehensive religious settlement in which most mainline Dissenters
would be admitted into the church. This failed for the same reasons that
comprehension had been failing for 30 years; the Anglican clergy would
not give up its monopoly, and Dissenters would not compromise their
principles. The Toleration Act permitted most forms of Protestant
worship; Unitarians were explicitly excluded, as were Catholics and
Jews. But the Test Acts that prevented Dissenters from holding
government office or sitting in Parliament were continued in force.

A new societyIn the decades before, and especially following, the Glorious
Revolution, profound realignments can be seen in English society.
Hitherto, the great divide was between landed wealth and urban wealth
derived from trade and the law. A new fault line became ever clearer
within landed society, and new ties emerged between the super-rich of
the city and countryside. The old social values that had tied the
peerage, or nobilitas maior (greater nobility), and gentry, or nobilitas
minor (lesser nobility), withered. A new social term emerged, the
aristocracy. Previously it had been used to describe not a social group
but a system of government; now it referred to an elite whose wealth was
vicarious, encompassing not only vast estates but also great profits
from urban redevelopment—such as the Russells’ redevelopment of Covent
Garden and later of Bloomsbury (from the time of Francis Russell, 4th
earl of Bedford) and the Grosvenors’ development of Mayfair, Belgravia,
and Pimlico (from the time of Sir Thomas Grosvenor in the early 18th
century). Profits also came to them from investment in overseas trading
companies and from government stock. They built elegant town houses to
go with their huge country houses, often pulling down or shifting whole
villages (as Sir Robert Walpole did at Houghton Hall and Philip Yorke,
earl of Hardwicke, did at Wimpole) so as to produce spacious parks and
noble vistas for themselves. They patronized the secular arts in one
sense and the ‘‘squires’’ (another new term for the ‘‘mere” gentry) in
another sense. The squires faced financial decline as their rent rolls
sagged and new, expensive forms of capital-intensive rather than
labour-intensive agriculture passed them by. Two new political epithets
were introduced: Whig aristocrat and Tory squire. They represented two
social realities and two political visions: the Whig vision of a
cosmopolitan, religiously and culturally liberal society and the Tory
vision of a world gone bad that had abandoned the paternalism of manor
house and parish church and of the confessional state and the organic
society (the body politic) in favour of a materialistic possessive
individualism. Post-revolution society was based much less on the rule
of social leaders voluntarily leading in public service and on private
philanthropy than on a rule of law made by the elite for the elite and
upon the professionalism of government. These changes to the social
order made many Tories temperamentally Jacobite, not in the sense that
they believed in the cause of James Edward, the Old Pretender, or
Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, but in the sense that they were in
perpetual mourning for the world they had lost.

The sinews of warWilliam III had come to England to further his continental designs, but
English politics conspired against him. The first years of his reign
were dominated by the constitutional issues of the revolution
settlement, and he became increasingly frustrated with the political
squabbling of Whigs and Tories. Moreover, holding the English throne was
proving more difficult than taking it. In 1690, with French backing,
James II invaded Ireland. William personally led an army to the Battle
of the Boyne (1690), where James’s forces were crushed. But the
compromise settlement that his plenipotentiaries reached with the
Catholic leaders as the price of their abandonment of resistance (the
Treaty of Limerick) was rejected by the Irish Parliament, which executed
the full rigours of the penal code upon Irish Catholics.

The Irish wars impressed upon William’s English subjects that, as
long as the French backed James, they were now part of the great
European struggle. Parliament granted William vast subsidies for the War
of the Grand Alliance (1688–97), more than £4.5 million in a two-year
period alone, but also established a right to oversee the expenditure of
public monies. This led to both economies and accountability, and it
forged a new political alliance among “country” (that is, anti-court)
forces that were uneasy about foreign entanglements and suspicious of
corruption at court. William’s war was going badly on land and sea. The
French fleet inflicted heavy losses on a combined Anglo-Dutch force and
heavier losses on English merchant shipping. The land war was a
desultory series of sieges and reliefs, which again tipped in favour of
France.

For some time it looked as if Scotland might go its own way. Whereas
in England the centre held and compromises were reached, in Scotland
James’s supporters first held their ground and then crumbled, and a
vindictive Parliament not only decreed a proscription of his supporters
but set out to place much greater limits on the crown. James was
formally deposed. Moreover, measures were taken to ensure that
Westminster could not dictate what was done in Edinburgh. And there was
to be religious toleration in Scotland. Episcopacy was abolished, and
all those who had taken part in the persecution of covenanting
conventicles in previous years were expelled from a vengeful kirk
(church). There was spasmodic resistance from Jacobites, and it took
several years and some atrocities—most notoriously, the slaughter of the
MacDonalds, instigated by their ancient enemies the Campbells, in the
Massacre of Glencoe in 1692—for William to secure complete control.

Year by year the financial costs mounted. Between 1688 and 1702
England accumulated more than £14 million of debt, which was financed
through the creation of the Bank of England (1694). The bank was a
joint-stock company empowered to discount bills and issue notes. It lent
to the government at a fixed rate of interest—initially 8 percent—and
this interest was secured by a specific customs grant. Investors
scrambled for the bank’s notes, which were considered gilt-edged
securities, and more than £1.2 million was raised on the initial
offering. Not surprisingly, a growing funded debt created inflation and
led to a financial crisis in 1696. But the underlying English economy
was sound, and military expenditures fueled production.

The establishment of a funded national debt and the Bank of England
was the work of the Whigs in alliance with the London mercantile
establishment. The Tories and the country party were alternately
suspicious and jealous of Whig success. In order to secure funds for his
campaigns, William had been forced to allow the Whigs to dominate
government, much against his inclination. An attempted assassination of
the king in 1696 gave the Whigs an opportunity to impose an oath on the
political nation that William was the “rightful and lawful king.” This
directly challenged Tory consciences, which had been tender since the
death of Queen Mary in 1694. Many resigned office rather than affirm
what they did not believe. The ascendancy of the so-called Junto Whigs
might have been secured had not European events once again intruded into
English affairs. In 1697 the War of the Grand Alliance ended with the
Treaty of Rijswijk, in which Louis XIV formally recognized William III
as king of England.

A great revulsion and war weariness now took hold of the country.
Parliament voted to disband most of the military establishment,
including William’s own Dutch guards, and a vigorous public debate
against the existence of a standing army ensued. Taxes were slashed,
accounts were audited, and irregularities were exposed. The Junto Whigs,
who were associated with war and war profiteers, fell. A new coalition
of country and Tory MPs, led by Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, launched
a vigorous campaign of retrenchment. It had not progressed very far by
1700, when the deaths of the duke of Gloucester and Charles II of Spain
redefined English and European priorities.

The duke of Gloucester was the only surviving child of Queen Mary’s
sister, Princess Anne, despite her 18 pregnancies. Because William and
Mary were childless, the duke was the long-term Protestant heir to the
throne. His death created a complicated problem that was resolved in the
Act of Settlement (1701), which bypassed 48 legitimate but Catholic
heirs and devolved the throne upon a granddaughter of James I, that is,
on Sophia of Hanover and her son George (later George I). In clauses
that read like a criticism of the policies of William III, the act
stipulated that the sovereign must be—and could only be—married to a
member of the Anglican church and that his foreign policy was to be
directed by Parliament and his domestic policy by the Privy Council. It
also limited the right of the king to dismiss judges at pleasure.
Although many of the more restrictive clauses of the act were repealed
in 1706, the Act of Settlement asserted a greater degree of
parliamentary control over the monarchy than had been obtained since
1649.

The consequences of the death of Charles II of Spain were no less
momentous. Years of futile negotiations to divide the vast Spanish
empire among several claimants came to an end when Louis XIV placed his
grandson on the Spanish throne and began making preparations to unite
the kingdoms into a grand Bourbon alliance. Louis’s aggressive stance
overcame even the torpor of British public opinion, especially when he
renounced William’s legitimacy and welcomed James Edward, the Old
Pretender, to his court as rightful king of England. William constructed
another anti-French coalition and bequeathed to Queen Anne the War of
the Spanish Succession (1701–14).

Anne (1702–14)

Queen Anne, daughter of James II and the last of the Stuarts, inherited
a country that was bitterly divided politically. Her weak eyesight and
indifferent health forced her to rely more upon her ministers than had
any of her Stuart predecessors, but she was no less effective for that.
Anne had decided views about people and policies, and these did much to
shape her reign. She detested the party divisions that now dominated
central politics and did all she could to avoid being controlled by
either Whigs or Tories. While she only briefly achieved her ideal of a
nonpartisan ministry, Anne did much to disappoint the ambitions of
nearly all party leaders.

Whigs and ToriesThe most significant development in political life over the previous
quarter century had been the growth of clearly defined and opposing
parties, which had taken the opprobrious titles Whigs and Tories.
Parties had first formed during the exclusion crisis of 1679–81, but it
was the Triennial Act (1694) that unintentionally gave life to party
conflict. Nine general elections were held between 1695 and 1713, and
these provided the structure whereby party issues and party leaders were
pushed to the fore. Though party discipline was still in its infancy and
ideology was a novel aspect of politics, clearly recognizable political
parties had emerged by the end of the reign of William III. In general,
the Tories stood for the Anglican church, the land, and the principle of
passive obedience. They remained divided over the impending Hanoverian
succession (see house of Hanover), wistfully dreaming that James Edward
might convert to Protestantism so that the sanctity of the legitimate
succession could be reaffirmed. From their country houses, the Tories
opposed an expensive land war and favoured the “blue sea” strategy of
dominating the Atlantic and Mediterranean shipping lanes. Their leaders
had a self-destructive streak. Only Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, was a
politician of the first rank, and he always shrank from being labeled a
Tory. The Tories generally had a majority in the Commons and a friend on
the throne, but they rarely attained power.

The Whigs stood for Parliament’s right to determine the succession to
the throne, for all necessary measures to blunt the international
pretensions of Catholic-absolutist France, and for a latitudinarian
approach to religion and a broad, generous interpretation of the
Toleration Act. They were blessed with brilliant leadership and an
inexhaustible supply of good luck. John Churchill, duke of Marlborough,
was the outstanding military figure of his day. His victories at the
Battle of Blenheim (1704) and the Battle of Ramillies (1706) rank among
the greatest in British history. During the first part of the reign, his
wife, Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, was the queen’s confidante, and
together the Marlboroughs were able to push Anne to support an
aggressive and expensive foreign policy. Continental warfare was costing
£4 million a year, paid for by a tax on land, and, after the early
years, successes were few and far between. Sidney Godolphin kept the
duke supplied and financed and ably managed the Whig interest by
disciplining government officeholders to vote for Whig policies in
Parliament. Among these policies was support for Dissenters who, to
avoid the rigours of the Test Acts, would take Anglican communion. Both
the queen and the Tories were opposed to these occasional conformists,
and three bills to outlaw the practice were passed through the Commons
but defeated in the Lords. When the Tories attempted to attach one of
these to the military appropriations bill, even the queen condemned the
maneuver.

For the first half of Anne’s reign, Whig policies were dominant. The
duke of Marlborough’s victories set off a wave of nationalistic pride
and forced even Tories to concede the wisdom of a land war.
Unfortunately, military success built overconfidence, prompting the
Whigs to adopt the fruitless policy of “no peace without Spain,” which
committed them to an increasingly unattainable conquest of Iberia. Yet
the capture of both Gibraltar (1704) and Minorca (1708) made England the
dominant sea power in the western Mediterranean and paid handsome
commercial dividends. So too did the unexpected union with Scotland in
1707 (see Act of Union). Here again, Godolphin was the dominant figure,
calling the Scottish Parliament’s bluff when it announced it would not
accept the Hanoverian succession. Godolphin passed the Aliens Act
(1705), which would have prohibited all trade between England and
Scotland—no mere scare tactic in light of the commercial policy that was
crippling the Irish economy. Rather than risk economic strangulation,
Scottish leaders negotiated for a permanent union, a compact the English
monarchy had sought for more than a century. The union was a
well-balanced bargain: free trade was established; Scottish
Presbyterianism and the Scottish legal system were protected; and
provisions were made to include 45 Scottish members in the English House
of Commons and 18 members in the House of Lords. England gained security
on its northern border, and the Whigs gained the promise of a peaceful
Hanoverian succession.

Tories and Jacobites Whig successes were not welcomed by the queen, who had a personal
aversion to most of their leaders, especially after her estrangement
from Sarah Churchill. As in the reign of William, war weariness and tax
resistance combined to bring down the Whigs. The earl of Oxford and
Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, vied for leadership of a
reinvigorated Tory party that rallied support with the cry “church in
danger.” In 1710 a Whig prosecution of a bigoted Anglican minister,
Henry Sacheverell, badly backfired. Orchestrated mob violence was
directed against dissenting churches, and Sacheverell was impeached by
only a narrow margin and given a light punishment. When the Tories
gained power, they were able to pass legislation directed against
Dissenters, including the Occasional Conformity Act (1711), which
forbade Dissenters to circumvent the test acts by occasionally taking
Anglican communion, and the Schism Act, which prevented them from
opening schools (they were barred from Anglican schools and colleges).
The Tories also concluded the War of the Spanish Succession. By the
Treaty of Utrecht (1713), England expanded its colonial empire in Canada
and the Caribbean and maintained possession of Gibraltar and Minorca in
the Mediterranean.

But the Tories had their own Achilles’ heel. They were deeply divided
over who should succeed Anne, which became public during the queen’s
serious illness in 1713. Though there were far more Hanoverian Tories
than Jacobite Tories (supporters of James II and his son, James Edward,
the Old Pretender), the prospect of the succession of a German Lutheran
prince with continental possessions to defend did not warm the hearts of
isolationist Anglican country gentlemen. Both Oxford and Bolingbroke
were in correspondence with James Edward, but Oxford made it plain that
he would only support a Protestant succession. Bolingbroke’s position
was more complicated. A brilliant politician, he realized that the
Tories would have little to hope for from the Hanoverians and that they
could only survive by creating huge majorities in Parliament and an
unshakable alliance with the church. Conflict between Tory leaders and
divisions within the rank and file combined to defeat Bolingbroke’s
plans. After Anne died in August 1714, George I acceded to the British
throne, and Bolingbroke, having tainted the Tory party with Jacobitism
for the next half century, fled to France.

Mark A. Kishlansky
John S. Morrill

18th-century Britain, 1714–1815

The state of Britain in 1714When Georg Ludwig, elector of Hanover, became king of Great Britain on
August 1, 1714, the country was in some respects bitterly divided.
Fundamentally, however, it was prosperous, cohesive, and already a
leading European and imperial power. Abroad, Britain’s involvement in
the War of the Spanish Succession had been brought to a satisfactory
conclusion by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). It had acquired new colonies
in Gibraltar, Minorca, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Hudson’s Bay, as
well as trading concessions in the Spanish New World. By contrast,
Britain’s rivals, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic, were left
weakened or war-weary by the conflict. It took France a decade to
recover, and Spain and Holland were unable to reverse their military and
economic decline. As a result Britain was able to remain aloof from war
on the Continent for a quarter of a century after the Hanoverian
succession, and this protracted peace was to be crucial to the new
dynasty’s survival and success.

War had also strengthened the British state at home. The need to
raise men and money had increased the size and scope of the executive as
well as the power and prestige of the House of Commons. Taxation had
accounted for 70 percent of Britain’s wartime expenditure (£93,644,560
between 1702 and 1713), so the Commons’ control over taxation became a
powerful guarantee of its continuing importance.

Britain’s ability to pay for war on this scale demonstrated the
extent of its wealth. Agriculture was still the bedrock of the economy,
but trade was increasing, and more men and women were employed in
industry in Britain than in any other European nation. Wealth, however,
was unequally distributed, with almost a third of the national income
belonging to only 5 percent of the population. But British society was
not polarized simply between the rich and the poor; according to writer
Daniel Defoe there were seven different and more subtle categories:

1. The great, who live profusely.

2. The rich, who live plentifully.

3. The middle sort, who live well.

4. The working trades, who labour hard, but feel no want.

5. The country people, farmers etc., who fare indifferently.

6. The poor, who fare hard.

7. The miserable, that really pinch and suffer want.

From 1700 to the 1740s Britain’s population remained stable at about
seven million, and agricultural production increased. So, although men
and women from Defoe’s 6th and 7th categories could still die of hunger
and hunger-related diseases, in most regions of Britain there was
usually enough basic food to go around. This was crucial to social
stability and to popular acquiescence in the new Hanoverian regime.

But early 18th-century Britain also had its weaknesses. Its Celtic
fringe—Wales, Ireland, and Scotland—had been barely assimilated. The
vast majority of Welsh men and women could neither speak nor understand
the English language. Most Irish men and women spoke Gaelic and belonged
to the Roman Catholic church, in contrast with the population of the
British mainland, which was staunchly Protestant. Scotland, which had
only been united to England and Wales in 1707, still retained its
traditional educational, religious, legal, and cultural practices. These
internal divisions were made more dangerous by the existence of rival
claimants to the British throne. James II, who had been expelled in the
Glorious Revolution of 1688, died 13 years later, but his son, James
Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, pressed his family’s claims
from his exile in France. His Catholicism and Scottish ancestry ensured
him wide support in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands; his cause also
commanded sympathy among sections of the Welsh and English gentry and,
arguably, among the masses.

Controversy over the succession sharpened partisan infighting between
the Whig and Tory parties. About 50 Tory MPs (less than a seventh of the
total number) may have been covert Jacobites in 1714. More generally,
Tories differed from Whigs over religious issues and foreign policy.
They were more anxious to preserve the privileges of the Anglican church
and more hostile to military involvement in continental Europe than Whig
politicians were inclined to be. These attitudes made the Tories
vulnerable in 1714. The new king was a Lutheran by upbringing and wanted
to establish wider religious toleration in his new kingdom. As a German
he was deeply interested in European affairs. Consequently he regarded
the Tory party as insular in its outlook as well as suspect in its
allegiance.

Britain from 1715 to 1742

The supremacy of the WhigsEven before he arrived in Britain, George I had decided to exclude the
two leading Tory ministers, Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, and Henry St.
John, Viscount Bolingbroke. In their place he appointed two Whig
politicians, Charles, Viscount Townshend, and James, Viscount Stanhope,
as secretaries of state. Townshend’s brother-in-law, Robert Walpole,
became paymaster general. Walpole, who came from a minor Norfolk gentry
family, was an extremely able politician, shrewd, greedy, and
undeviatingly Whig. He encouraged the new king’s partisan bias, turning
it unremittingly to his advantage. A general election was held in
February 1715, and, due in part to royal influence, the Whigs won 341
seats to the Tories’ 217. In December the Old Pretender landed in
Scotland, provoking an armed rebellion that was quickly suppressed. The
proved involvement of a small number of Tory landowners led to Tories
being purged not only from state office but also from the higher ranks
of the army and navy, the diplomatic service, and the judicial system.
To make their capture of the state even more secure, the Whigs passed
the Septennial Act in 1716. It allowed general elections to occur at
seven-year intervals instead of every three years, as mandated by the
Triennial Act of 1694. The intention was to tame the electorate, which
during Anne’s reign had shown itself to be volatile and far more
inclined to vote Tory than Whig.

Having defeated their Tory opponents, the Whig leaders began to
quarrel among themselves. In 1717 Walpole and Townshend left office and
went into open opposition. Stanhope stayed on, with Charles Spencer,
earl of Sunderland, now serving as secretary of state. At the same time
the heir apparent to the throne, George, prince of Wales, quarreled with
his father and began to flirt with Opposition groups in Parliament.
These events set the pattern for future political conflicts. From then
on until the 1750s the Opposition in Parliament would be a hybrid group
of Whig and Tory sympathizers. And from then on until the early 19th
century Oppositions in Parliament would enjoy sporadic support from
successive princes of Wales. In 1717 the rebel Whigs were a serious
threat in large part because Walpole was such a skillful
House-of-Commons politician. As peers, Sunderland and Stanhope were
confined to the House of Lords and lacked spokesmen in the Commons who
could match Walpole’s ruthlessness and talent. He showed his power by
mobilizing a majority of MPs against the Peerage Bill in 1719. Had this
legislation passed, it would have limited the king’s prerogative to
create new peers, thereby cementing the Whig administration’s majority
in the House of Lords. To prevent further blows of this kind, the Whig
elite ended its schism in April 1720. The royal family temporarily
buried its differences at the same time.

The restoration of unity was just as well, as 1720 saw the bursting
of what became known as the South Sea Bubble. The South Sea Company had
been founded in 1711 as a trading and finance company. In 1719 its
directors offered to take over a large portion of the national debt
previously managed by the Bank of England. The Whig administration
supported this takeover, and in return the company made gifts (in
effect, bribes) of its new stock to influential Whig politicians,
including Stanhope and Sunderland, and to the king’s mistress, the
Duchess of Kendal. In 1720 investing in the South Sea Company became a
mania among those who could afford it and some who could not; South Sea
stock was at 120 in January and rose to 1,000 by August. But in
September the inevitable crash came. Many landed and mercantile families
were ruined, and there was a nationwide shortage of specie. Parliament
demanded an inquiry, thus raising the possibility that members of the
government and the royal family would be openly implicated in financial
scandal. This disaster proved to be Walpole’s opportunity, and he did
not waste it. He used his influence in the Commons to blunt the
parliamentary inquiry and managed gradually to restore financial
confidence. The strain of the investigation killed Stanhope, and
Sunderland too died in 1722. Walpole duly became first lord of the
treasury and chancellor of exchequer, while Townshend returned to his
post as secretary of state.

Walpole’s position as the king’s favourite minister was finally
assured when he exposed the Atterbury plot. Francis Atterbury was bishop
of Rochester. Always a Tory and High Churchman, he drifted after the
Hanoverian succession into Jacobite intrigue. In 1721–22 he and a small
group of conspirators plotted an armed invasion of Britain on behalf of
the Old Pretender. The plot was uncovered by the secret service, which
was more efficient in this period than it was until World War II.
Atterbury was tried for treason by Parliament and sent into exile. This
coup, one politician aptly wrote at the time, was the “most fortunate
and greatest circumstance of Mr Walpole’s life. It fixed him with the
King, and united for a time the whole body of Whigs to him, and gave him
the universal credit of an able and vigilant Minister.”

Robert Walpole Walpole has often been referred to as Britain’s first prime minister,
but historically this is incorrect. The title had in fact been applied
to certain ministers in Anne’s reign and was commonly used as a slur or
simply as a synonym for first minister. During Walpole’s period of
dominance it was certainly used more frequently, but it did not become
an official title until the early 20th century. Some historians have
also claimed that Walpole was the architect of political stability in
Britain, but this interpretation needs to be qualified. There is no
doubt that from 1722 to his resignation in 1742 Walpole stabilized
political power in himself and a section of the Whig party. Nor can
there be any doubt that his foreign and economic policies helped the
Hanoverian dynasty to become securely entrenched in Britain. But it
should not be forgotten that Walpole inherited a nation that was already
wealthy and at peace. He built on foundations that were already very
strong. And, although he was to dominate political life for 20 years, he
never succeeded in stamping out political, religious, and cultural
opposition entirely, nor did he expect to do so.

Opposition to Walpole in Parliament began to develop as early as
1725. When William Pulteney, an ambitious and talented politician, was
dismissed from state office, he and 17 other Whig MPs aligned themselves
with the 150 Tory MPs remaining in the House of Commons. These
dissidents (who called themselves Patriot Whigs) grew in number until,
by the mid-1730s, more than 100 Whig MPs were collaborating with the
Tories against Walpole’s nominally Whig administration. Some were
motivated primarily by disappointed ambition. But many Whigs and Tories
genuinely believed that Walpole had arrogated too much power to himself
and that he was corrupt and an enemy to liberty. These accusations were
expressed not just among politicians in London but also in the growing
number of newspapers and periodicals in Britain at large. In 1726
Pulteney and the one-time Tory minister Lord Bolingbroke founded their
own journal, The Craftsman (the implication of the title being that
Walpole governed by craft alone). It was widely read among the political
classes, not least because many of the most gifted writers working in
London had been drawn into the Opposition camp. Jonathan Swift,
Alexander Pope, and, for a time, Henry Fielding all wrote against
Walpole. So did John Gay, whose triumphantly successful The Beggar’s
Opera (1728) was a satire on ministerial corruption.

But, despite its flamboyance and innovative tactics, the Opposition
for a long time lacked high-level support. Frequent disagreements
occurred between its Patriot Whig and Tory sectors. These weaknesses
helped Walpole to keep the Opposition at bay until 1742. But there were
other reasons for his prolonged stay in power: he retained the support
of the crown, resisted military involvement in Europe, pursued a
moderate religious policy, and adopted a skillful economic policy.
Moreover, in the general elections of 1727 and 1734 he was able to
manipulate the electoral system to maintain himself in power.

George II and Walpole

George I died in June 1727 and was buried in Hanover. He was succeeded
by his eldest son, who became George II. Initially the new king planned
to dismiss Walpole and appoint his personal favourite, Spencer Compton,
in his place. Closer familiarity with Walpole’s gifts, however,
dissuaded him from taking this step, as did his formidable wife, Queen
Caroline, who remained an important ally of the minister until her death
in 1737. Walpole cemented his advantage by securing the king a Civil
List (money allowance) from Parliament of £800,000, a considerably
larger sum than previous monarchs had been able to enjoy. Royal favour,
in turn, shored up Walpole’s parliamentary majority. Because the monarch
appointed and promoted peers, he had massive influence in the House of
Lords. In addition, he appointed the 26 bishops of the Church of
England, who also possessed seats in the House of Lords. He alone could
promote men to high office in the army, navy, diplomatic service, and
bureaucracy. Consequently, MPs who held such offices (the so-called
placemen), and those who wanted to hold them in the future, were likely
to support Walpole as the king’s minister out of self-interest, if for
no other reason. Walpole, however, could never take royal support for
granted. George II was an irritable but by no means an insignificant
figure who retained great influence in terms of patronage, military
affairs, and foreign policy. He demanded respect from his minister and
had to be carefully managed.

Foreign policyOnce the Hanoverian succession had taken place, Whig ministers became as
eager to remain at peace with France as the Tories had been. Walpole
certainly adhered to this view, and for good reasons. Although Britain
now possessed the world’s most powerful navy, it could not match France
in land forces. War with France, moreover, was likely to lead to an
invasion of Hanover, which was naturally unwelcome to George I and his
successor. It would also give the Old Pretender the prospect of French
military aid to launch an invasion against Britain itself. In 1717
Stanhope negotiated a Triple Alliance with the French and the Dutch.
This treaty was maintained by Walpole and Townshend throughout the
1720s. By 1730, however, it was attracting considerable criticism from
the Opposition, and in the Second Treaty of Vienna, signed in March
1731, Walpole jettisoned the Anglo-French alliance in favour of an
alliance with Austria. But whether forming an alliance with the French
or the Austrians, Walpole always considered it his primary aim to keep
Britain out of war in continental Europe. In 1733 Austria, Saxony, and
Russia went to war against France, Spain, and Sardinia in the War of the
Polish Succession (1733–38). The Austrians asked for British aid under
the terms of the Treaty of Vienna, but Walpole refused to give it. By
keeping out of European entanglements for so long, Walpole appeased some
of the traditionally insular Tory MPs. He also kept direct taxation low,
which pleased many landed families. The land tax was cut to two
shillings in the pound (10 percent) in 1730 and to one shilling in the
pound two years later.

Religious policyWalpole’s religious policy was also designed to foster social and
political quiescence. Traditionally the Whig party had supported wider
concessions to the Protestant dissenters (Protestants who believed in
the doctrine of the Trinity but who refused to join in the worship of
the state church, the Church of England). They had been given freedom of
worship under the Toleration Act of 1689 but were barred from full civil
rights and access to university education in England. In 1719 the Whigs
had repealed two pieces of Tory legislation aimed against dissent, the
Schism and the Occasional Conformity acts. These concessions ensured
that Protestant dissenters would be able to establish their own
educational academies and hold public office in the localities, if not
in the state.

There was always a danger, however, that too many concessions to
Protestant dissent would alienate the Church of England, which enjoyed
wide support in England and Wales. There were 5,000 parishes in these
two countries, each containing at least one church served by a vicar
(minister) or a curate (his deputy). For much of the 18th century these
Anglican churches provided the only large, covered meeting places
available outside of towns. They served as sources of spiritual comfort
and also as centres for village social life. At religious services
vicars would not only preach the word of God but also explain to
congregations important national developments: wars, victories, and
royal deaths and births. Thus churches often supplied the poor, the
illiterate, and particularly women with the only political information
available to them. Weakening the Church of England therefore struck
Walpole as unwise, for at least two reasons. Its ministers provided a
vital service to the state by communicating political instruction to the
people. The church, moreover, commanded massive popular loyalty, and
assaults on its position would arouse nationwide discontent. Walpole
therefore determined to reach an accommodation with the church, and in
1723 he came to an agreement with Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London.
Gibson was to ensure that only clergymen sympathetic to the Whig
administration were appointed to influential positions in the Church of
England. In return, Walpole undertook that no further extensive
concessions would be made to Protestant dissenters. This arrangement
continued until 1736.

Economic policiesFinally, Walpole’s long tenure of power was assisted by national
prosperity. The gross national product rose from £57.5 million in 1720
to £64.1 million in 1740, an increase of 11.5 percent. Walpole
encouraged trade by abolishing some customs duties, but his main
economic concerns were to reduce interest payments on the national debt
and to foster agriculture by switching taxation from land to
consumption. He succeeded in reducing interest payments on the debt by
26 percent during his time in office, but his efforts to reduce the land
tax in favour of more excises almost led to political disaster. In 1732
he revived a duty on salt, which enabled him to cut the land tax to one
shilling in the pound. In 1733 he proposed to levy excise taxes on the
sale of wine and tobacco, but the Opposition in Parliament launched a
ferocious and successful campaign against these proposals. It claimed
that excises weighed unfairly on the poor, whereas the land tax was
mainly paid by the prosperous. It claimed, too, that excise collectors,
and there were more than 6,000 of them employed by the state by this
time, intruded into citizens’ private affairs and were a danger to
British liberties. This crisis led to nationwide riots and
demonstrations, and Walpole’s House-of-Commons majority seemed in
jeopardy. In April 1733 he decided to retreat. He continued, however,
until 1740 to keep the land tax at a low rate, thereby winning important
support from the nation’s dominant landed class.

The electoral systemThe fiasco over the excise might have toppled Walpole, since a general
election was scheduled for 1734. In fact, however, his administration
retained a comfortable majority in the House of Commons. One reason for
this was that Britain’s electoral system at this time did not adequately
reflect the state of public opinion. Until the Reform Act of 1832
England returned 489 MPs. Eighty of these were elected by the 40 county
constituencies; 196 smaller constituencies called boroughs returned two
MPs each, and two other boroughs, including London, the capital city,
returned four MPs each. Oxford and Cambridge universities were also
allowed four representatives in Parliament. Wales returned only 24
members of Parliament and Scotland 45. Their limited representation
indicated the extent to which these countries were subordinated to
England in the British political system at this time.

The system was not even remotely democratic. Power in this society
was intimately and inextricably connected with the possession of
property, particularly landed property. To be eligible for election as
an MP, a man had to possess land worth £600 per annum if he was
representing a county constituency and worth £300 per annum in the case
of a borough constituency. To vote, adult males had to possess some kind
of residential property or, in certain borough constituencies, be
registered as freemen. Women were not given the vote until 1918.

In all, some 350,000 Britons may have been able to vote in the 1720s,
which was roughly one in four of the adult male population. There was no
secret ballot, and voting took place in public. Consequently, many
voters were liable to be influenced or coerced by their landlords or
employers or bribed by the candidates themselves. Bribery was
particularly widespread and effective in the smaller boroughs where
there were often fewer than 100 voters and sometimes fewer than 50.
These constituencies were called rotten or pocket boroughs. In the
borough of Malmesbury, for example, in the English county of Wiltshire,
there were only 13 voters, few of whom voted strictly in accordance with
their own conscience or opinions: “It was no odds to them who they voted
for,” one inhabitant declared, “it was as master pleased.” Large
electorates could be found, however, in some areas. The northern English
county constituency of Yorkshire had 15,000 voters in 1741. In Bristol,
a major port on the western coast of England, 5,000 men had the
vote—approximately one-third of the city’s adult male population. In
these larger constituencies public opinion could make itself felt at
election time. The problem for the Opposition in 1734 was that there
were few such populous, open constituencies but very many rotten borough
seats such as Malmesbury. Since government candidates usually had more
to bribe voters with in the way of money and favours, Walpole was able
to win the majority of these boroughs and therefore retain his majority
in the House of Commons despite his unpopularity after the excise
crisis.

Walpole’s loss of powerWalpole’s luck and political grasp only began to fail in 1737. In that
year Queen Caroline, one of his most important allies, died. At this
time, too, Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, George II’s eldest son and
heir apparent, followed Hanoverian family tradition; he quarreled with
his father and aligned himself with the Opposition. This damaged
Walpole’s position in two ways. The king, born in 1683, was now in his
50s, which was elderly by the standards of the time. Many young
ambitious MPs, such as William Pitt, were inclined to join Prince
Frederick, because they saw in him the political future. Moreover, as
Prince of Wales, Frederick owned a large part of the county of Cornwall
and consequently controlled numerous rotten boroughs. In the 1734
election the Cornish constituencies had returned 32 pro-government MPs
to Parliament; but at the next general election in 1741, when Prince
Frederick used his electoral influence against Walpole, only 17
pro-government candidates were returned by this county. Walpole lost
another important ally to the opposition, John, duke of Argyll. Argyll
was a member of the Cabinet, the most important Whig landowner in
Scotland, and head of Clan Campbell. In the 1734 election his influence
in Scotland helped to ensure that 34 of the country’s 45 elected MPs
were pro-government. But by the 1741 election he had defected to the
Opposition, and the electoral repercussions were serious. On this
occasion Scottish constituencies only elected 17 pro-government MPs.

But Walpole’s main enemies were time and war. By 1737 he was in his
60s and had dominated politics for 15 years. Some ambitious Whigs
resented his prolonged monopoly on power; others anticipated his
retirement or death and judged it prudent to distance themselves from
his administration. And some of Walpole’s policies were now widely
viewed as dubious, even anachronistic. Whereas he wanted to keep Britain
out of war, many government and Opposition MPs, and even some members of
Walpole’s own Cabinet, favoured going to war with Spain to gain colonial
and commercial objectives. Such a war policy was strongly backed by
commercial opinion in London and in the nation’s main trading cities.

It was a sign of Walpole’s declining powers that he was unable to
prevent the drift into war in 1739. The War of Jenkins’ Ear (so called
after an alleged Spanish atrocity against a British merchant navy
officer, Captain Robert Jenkins) was initially successful. Admiral
Edward Vernon became a popular and Opposition hero when he captured the
Spanish settlement of Portobelo (in what is now Panama) in November
1739. But his victory was followed by several defeats, and Britain soon
became embroiled in a wider European conflict, the War of the Austrian
Succession. Walpole survived the general election of 1741, but with a
greatly reduced majority. His political doom was sealed in the fall of
that year when the Tory and Whig sectors of the Opposition managed
finally to agree on a strategy to defeat him. Walpole eventually
resigned from his offices in early 1742. He still retained the king’s
favour, and, although sections of the Opposition wanted to impeach him
for corruption, he was given a peerage, entered the House of Lords as
earl of Orford, and died in his bed in 1745. Nonetheless, the fact that
he had to resign despite George II’s continuing support indicated an
important development in the British political system. Although monarchs
retained the rights to choose their own ministers, they could no longer
retain a chief minister who was unable to command a majority of votes in
the House of Commons. If they wanted to remain in office, chief
ministers now needed to possess parliamentary as well as royal support.

Britain from 1742 to 1754

Political events after Walpole’s resignation demonstrated once again the
artificiality and inner tensions of the Opposition. Its Tory sector
(some 140 MPs strong) had expected that a new administration would be
formed in which some of their leaders would be given state office. They
hoped that the proscription of their party, implemented after 1714,
would be reversed and that various changes in domestic and foreign
policy would be made. But now that Walpole was out of the picture many
of their Patriot Whig allies wanted nothing more to do with Tories or
Tory measures. The leading Patriot Whig, William Pulteney, accepted a
peerage and became earl of Bath. Six other Patriot Whigs accepted
government office, including John, Baron Carteret (later earl of
Granville), who became the new secretary of state. Spencer Compton, now
earl of Wilmington, became the new first lord of the treasury and
nominal head of the government. Fourteen former members of Walpole’s
administration retained their posts, including Henry Pelham and his
older brother, Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of Newcastle. The Tories, as
well as many people outside Parliament, had expected the fall of Walpole
to result in a revolution in government and society, but this did not
occur. Instead, all that had happened was a reshuffling of state
employment among patrician Whigs, which caused widespread
disillusionment and anger. It was with the Patriot Whigs in mind that
Samuel Johnson, a staunch Tory, was later to describe patriotism in his
Dictionary as the last resort of the scoundrel.

When Wilmington died in 1743, Carteret took over as head of the
administration. He was a clever and subtle man, able to speak many
European languages, and fascinated by foreign affairs. These qualities
naturally endeared him to the king. His status as a royal favourite was
confirmed when he accompanied George on a military expedition to Germany
in defense of the electorate of Hanover. In June George commanded his
British and Hanoverian troops at the Battle of Dettingen (the last
battle in which a British monarch commanded), defeating the opposing
French forces. But the victory was not followed up and aroused little
patriotic enthusiasm in Britain. Instead, accusations that the king and
Carteret were sacrificing British interests to Hanoverian priorities
were openly expressed in Parliament and in the press. The Pelham
brothers took advantage of this discontent (and Carteret’s absence) to
undermine his political position. In November 1744 he was forced to
resign, though during the next 18 months George II continued to consult
with him privately on political business. These intrigues infuriated
Henry Pelham, who was now first lord of the treasury and chancellor of
the exchequer, and his brother Newcastle, who was secretary of state.

The Jacobite rebellionBritain’s involvement in the War of the Austrian Succession, Tory and
popular anger at the political deals that followed Walpole’s
resignation, and the infighting among the Whig elite were the background
to the Jacobite rebellion of 1745–46 (the Forty-five). Since Britain was
now at odds with France, the latter power was willing to sponsor an
invasion on behalf of the Stuart dynasty. It hoped that such an invasion
would win support from the masses and from the Tory sector of the landed
class. Although a handful of Tory conspirators encouraged these hopes,
the degree of their commitment is open to question. A large-scale French
naval invasion of Britain in early 1744 failed in part because these men
would not commit themselves to action. In July 1745 the Old Pretender’s
eldest son, Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender), landed in
Scotland without substantial French aid. In September he and some 2,500
Scottish supporters defeated a British force of the same size at the
Battle of Prestonpans. In December, with an army of 5,000 men, he
marched into England and got as far south as the town of Derby, some 150
miles from London.

Charles’s initial success owed much to the ineptitude, the unconcern
even, of Britain’s rulers. One problem was that the standing army was
too small, consisting of some 62,000 men. Because of Britain’s
involvement in the War of the Austrian Succession, the bulk of this
force was in Flanders and Germany. Only 4,000 men had been left to
defend Scotland, and most of them were raw recruits. Moreover, hampered
by internal divisions, the administration was slow to respond. When the
Young Pretender landed, the Pelhams were anxious but Carteret, now earl
of Granville, was not. Nor, at the beginning, was George II, who was
actually in Hanover when his rival for the throne landed. As a result of
these squabbles and misunderstandings, Parliament did not assemble until
October 17, 1745. Because by law only Parliament could authorize money
to pay the militia (Britain’s civil defense force), this delay seriously
impeded early resistance to the Jacobite force. The city of Carlisle in
the north of England surrendered to the rebels in November largely
because its militia had received no pay from the government or from
anyone else for two months.

Some historians have argued that the mass of Britain’s population
cared little which dynasty ruled them at this time and that the Young
Pretender would have regained the kingdom for the Stuarts if only he had
pressed on to London. Clearly, this thesis can never be proved one way
or the other. The Jacobites, however, did not try to march on to London
but retreated to Scotland. Nonetheless, it is probably significant that
the Young Pretender attracted scarcely any English supporters on his
march to Derby. Only in Manchester, which had a large Catholic
population, did he gain recruits—some 200 men, mostly unemployed
weavers. No Tory landowner or politician joined him, nor did any men of
influence or wealth come out in his favour. By contrast, once the
seriousness of the invasion was recognized, many individuals joined
home-defense units or subscribed money against it. Between September and
December 57 civilian loyal associations are known to have been founded
in 38 different counties. Merchants and traders in the prosperous
towns—Liverpool, Norwich, Exeter, Bristol, and most of all London—were
particularly prominent in loyalist activity.

Although many Britons had become disillusioned by events after
Walpole’s fall, probably few were seriously tempted by the prospect of a
Jacobite restoration. The Young Pretender, a Roman Catholic, was viewed
as the pawn of France, Britain’s enemy and prime commercial and imperial
competitor. Traditionally the Catholic religion and French politics were
associated with absolutist government, religious persecution, and
assaults on liberty. These prejudices worked against the Young
Pretender’s appeal, as did prejudices against the Scottish Highlanders,
the bulk of his armed supporters, who were regarded as terrifying
barbarians by many of the English. The lack of mass English support for
the Stuarts in 1745 dissuaded the French government from sending
substantial military aid to the rebels. On April 16, 1746, the duke of
Cumberland (George II’s second son) defeated the Jacobite army at
Culloden in northern Scotland. This was the last major land battle to
occur in Great Britain. The Young Pretender escaped to France and
finally died in 1788, sodden with drink and disillusionment.

The main result of the Forty-five was the British government’s
decision to integrate Scotland, and particularly the Scottish Highlands,
more fully into the rest of the kingdom. Despite the Act of Union of
1707, clan chieftains had retained considerable judicial and military
powers over their followers. But these powers were destroyed by the
Abolition of Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act of 1747. Other
statutes required oaths of allegiance to the Hanoverian dynasty from the
Episcopalian clergy, banned the wearing of kilts and tartans in an
attempt to erode distinctive Highlands practices, and confiscated arms.
The administration also confiscated the estates of Highlands chieftains
who had rebelled and used the proceeds to encourage trade and
agriculture in Scotland. Indeed, the gradual pacification of Scotland
and its partial integration into a united Britain probably owed more to
growing prosperity than to legal changes. By the mid-1750s Scotland’s
population was estimated at 1,265,380, and it continued to grow at a
rapid rate until the 1830s. Linen production doubled between 1750 and
1775, and coal mining, iron smelting, and agricultural productivity also
began to expand. Economic and demographic growth was particularly
dramatic in towns such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Dundee. The
Act of Union had made Britain the largest free-trade area in Europe,
and, as more Scots came to profit from trading and manufacturing links
with England, more had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

The rule of the PelhamsDefeating the rebellion also strengthened the position of the Pelhams.
In February 1746, George II attempted to replace them with Granville but
failed. Thereafter Henry Pelham and Newcastle insisted upon and received
the king’s full confidence. The attempted invasion widened once again
the gulf between the Whig and Tory parties. The Whigs became for a time
more united, and the Tories did badly in the general election of 1747,
winning only 110 seats. The only serious opposition Pelham faced after
that date came from the heir to the throne, Frederick, prince of Wales.
Although Frederick had abandoned the Opposition in 1742, his impatience
to succeed to the throne soon prompted him to drift back into political
intrigue against his father and his father’s ministers. He claimed to be
motivated by some of Lord Bolingbroke’s political ideas. In 1738, during
Frederick’s earlier phase of opposition, Bolingbroke had written The
Idea of a Patriot King, arguing that a future ideal monarch could unify
and purify the nation by seizing the initiative to abolish faction and
ruling over an administration based on virtue rather than on party.
Frederick’s avowed commitment to a nonparty government attracted Tory as
well as a few Whig MPs to his support in the late 1740s. But their
schemes and hopes were dashed when Frederick died in 1751. His eldest
son, George (the future George III), became heir to the throne, and
serious opposition to Pelham effectively ceased. Debate in Parliament
became so muted, one politician wrote, that a bird might have built its
nest in the Speaker’s wig and never be disturbed.

Both Pelham and Newcastle were overshadowed by their more famous
predecessor Robert Walpole and by their charismatic successor, William
Pitt the Elder. Like Walpole, both brothers regarded themselves as
staunchly Whig though their ideology was by no means clear-cut. Like
Walpole, they had little enthusiasm for British involvement in European
wars. They helped to negotiate the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748),
which ended the War of the Austrian Succession. Like Walpole, too, the
Pelhams sought to reduce the national debt and to keep taxation on land
low. But unlike Walpole, they avoided corruption; both lost rather than
made money during their political careers. And Henry Pelham was more
interested in domestic reform than Walpole had been.

Domestic reformsThe Gin Act of 1751 was designed to reduce consumption of raw spirits,
regarded by contemporaries as one of the main causes of crime in London.
In 1752 Britain’s calendar was brought into conformity with that used in
continental Europe. Throughout the continent, the calendar reformed in
the 16th century by Pope Gregory XIII had gained widespread use by the
mid-18th century and was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which had
been used in Britain. It was once believed that protests against this
change—“give us back our 11 days,” crowds are supposed to have
chanted—represented nothing more than parochial ignorance. In fact the
adoption of the new calendar, though it ultimately benefited commerce
and international relations, initially played havoc with monthly rental
payments and wages in the short term. In 1753 the Marriage Act was
passed to prevent secret marriages by unqualified clergymen. From then
on, every bride and groom had to sign a marriage register or, if they
were illiterate, make their mark upon it. This innovation has been of
enormous value to historians, enabling them to establish how many
Britons were able to write at this time and, by inference, how many
could read.

British society by the mid-18th century

Joseph Massie’s categoriesFrom the Hanoverian succession to the mid-18th century the texture and
quality of life in Britain changed considerably but by no means evenly.
Change was far more pronounced in the towns than in the countryside and
among the prosperous than among the poor. The latter category was still
very large; in the late 1750s an economist named Joseph Massie estimated
that the bottom 40 percent of the population had to survive on less than
14 percent of the nation’s income. The rest of his calculations can be
summarized as follows:

Massie’s calculations were not exact since no official census was
implemented in Britain until 1800. But his figures were probably broadly
correct and are the best available for this period. It is noticeable
that his top three categories had close connections with the land, still
the bedrock of wealth, status, and power. The greatest landowners
(Massie’s 310 families) owned estates ranging from 10,000 to 20,000
acres. Many of them belonged to the peerage, that is, they were dukes,
marquesses, earls, viscounts, or barons. Such hereditary titles, which
could only be granted by the crown, carried with them the right to sit
in the House of Lords. In the reigns of George I and George II there
were some 170 of these peers. Almost all of them possessed fine houses
in London as well as one or more mansions in the counties where their
land lay. The dukes of Marlborough (Winston Churchill’s ancestors), for
example, dominated large parts of Oxfordshire from their stately home of
Blenheim (built 1705–30). The earls of Carlisle in Cumberland built
Castle Howard in the same period, spending £35,000 on the house and a
further £24,000 on the gardens. Together with the greater gentry and the
squires, listed in Massie’s second and third categories, great
landowners such as these owned considerably more than half of the
cultivatable land in Britain.

Not all wealthy men were landowners. The foundation of the Bank of
England in 1694 and other finance companies made it possible to make
fortunes on the stock market, and the expansion of trade and industry
forged powerful mercantile dynasties such as the Whitbreads (brewing),
Smiths (banking), and Strutts (textiles). Some of these self-made
families purchased landed estates to advertise their new wealth; others
made do with smart town houses or country villas. But, although it was
possible to be rich and influential in this society without owning broad
acres, it was the landed elite that set the cultural tone and dominated
positions of power in both central and local government. Every peer in
the House of Lords and a majority of MPs in the House of Commons owned
land. Landowners also monopolized the office of lord lieutenant. Lords
lieutenant were the crown’s leading representatives in each of the
English and Welsh counties. (Only in the 1790s was this office extended
to Scotland.) Appointed by the king, they were responsible for
maintaining law and order in their counties and for organizing civil
defense measures during time of war. To assist them in these tasks, they
appointed deputy lieutenants and justices of the peace—offices usually
held by the squires and lesser gentry in the countryside and by
merchants and landed gentlemen in the towns. None of these offices
carried salaries—a clear indication that they were confined to the
prosperous. But they brought with them considerable local influence and
status and were often much sought after.

Less is known about Massie’s 4th, 5th, and 6th social categories than
about the landowning classes. And much less is known about small
merchants, tradesmen, professionals, artisans, and labourers in Wales
and Scotland than about their English equivalents. Most historians
believe that the middle-income groups were increasing in number in the
mid-18th century. Professional opportunities in law, medicine,
schoolteaching, banking, and government service certainly expanded at
this time. In the town of Preston in Lancashire, for example, there was
only one attorney in 1702; by 1728 there were 17. Growing prosperity
also increased job opportunities in the leisure and luxury industries.
Urban directories show that there were more musicians and music teachers
and more dancing masters, booksellers, caterers, and landscape gardeners
than in the 17th century. And there were more shops. Shops had expanded
even into rural areas by the 1680s, but in the 18th century they
proliferated at a much faster rate. By 1770 the new town of Birmingham
in Warwickshire had 129 shops dealing in buttons and 56 selling toys, as
well as 35 jewelers. Not for nothing would Napoleon Bonaparte later
describe Britain as a nation of shopkeepers.

Urban development The centre of this commercial culture was the city of London. As the
only real national metropolis, London was unique in its size and
multiplicity of functions. By 1750 it contained more than 650,000
citizens—just under one in 10 of Britain’s population. By contrast, only
one in 40 Frenchmen lived in Paris in this period. The Hague held only
one in 50 of the inhabitants of the Netherlands, and Madrid was the home
of just one in 80 Spaniards. Some of these great European capitals had
no resident sovereign. Many others, such as Vienna and St. Petersburg,
were grand ceremonial and cultural centres but effectively isolated from
the economic life of their national hinterland. London was different. It
was not only the location of the Court and of Parliament but also the
nation’s chief port, its financial centre, the home of its printing
industry, and the hub of its communications network. Britain’s rulers
were brought into constant proximity with powerful economic lobbies from
all parts of the nation and with a large and constantly fluctuating
portion of their subjects. Britons seem to have been more mobile than
their fellow Europeans in this period, and then as now many traveled to
the capital to find work and excitement. Perhaps as many as one in six
Britons spent a portion of their working life in London in the 18th
century.

London easily dwarfed the other British towns. In 1750 its nearest
rival, Norwich, had fewer than 50,000 people. Nonetheless, the
provincial towns, although functioning on quite a different scale from
that of the metropolis, were also growing in size and importance at this
time. In 1700 only 10 of them contained more than 10,000 people. By 1750
there were 17 towns with populations of that size, and by 1800 there
were more than 50. As towns grew, they became better organized and
safer, more pleasant places to live in. Because more stone was used in
buildings, the risk of destruction by fire began to lessen. Towns
acquired insurance companies and fire engines to protect their citizens.
Supplies of clean water improved. Urban planning and architecture became
more sophisticated and splendid, and the results can still be seen today
in towns like Stamford in Lincolnshire or Bath in Somerset. These
provincial centres developed cultural lives of their own, with new
theatres, assembly rooms, libraries, Freemason lodges, and coffeehouses.
By mid-century there were at least nine coffeehouses in Bristol, six in
both Liverpool and Chester, two in Northampton, and at least one in most
substantial market towns. Such establishments supplied their customers
with newspapers and a place to gossip as well as with liquid
refreshments. They also often served as a base for clubs, debating
societies, and spontaneous political activity. Schools grew in number,
in both the towns and the surrounding countryside. In just one English
county, Northamptonshire, the local newspaper press advertised the
establishment of more than 100 new schools between 1720 and 1760.

Change and continuityHistorians have differed sharply over the impact these commercial and
cultural innovations had on British society as a whole. Some have argued
that only a minority of men and women were touched by them and that the
countryside, which contained the majority of the population, continued
on in its traditional ways and values. This is certainly true of parts
of Britain. The Scottish Highlands, the mountainous central regions of
Wales, and some English regions such as East Anglia remained
predominately rural and agricultural. Old beliefs and superstitions
lingered on there and elsewhere, often into the late 19th century.
Although Parliament repealed the laws against witchcraft in the 1730s,
for example, many men and women, and not just the illiterate, continued
to believe in its power. (John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was
convinced that witches and the Devil had a real corporeal existence on
earth.) It is true, too, that many of the new consumer goods that
improved the quality of life for the prosperous—porcelain china,
armchairs, fine mirrors, newspapers, and manufactured toys—were beyond
the economic reach of the poor. And, although new styles of interior
decoration transformed the dwellings of the landed and mercantile
classes—the sale of wallpaper, for example, had risen from 197,000 yards
in 1713 to more than two million yards in 1785, a 10-fold increase—they
rarely reached the impoverished. Some agricultural labourers and miners
had only one set of clothes and lived in mud-lined cottages, caves, or
cellars. Beggars, vagrants, and the unemployed might not possess even
these basic commodities.

Yet it would be wrong to postulate too stark a contrast in
life-styles between the town and countryside, between the wealthy and
the lower orders. Points of contact between the various layers of
British society were in fact increasing at this time. More and more
country landowners, their womenfolk, and their servants succumbed
(without, one suspects, too much trouble) to the temptation of spending
some months every year sampling the pleasures of their neighbourhood
provincial town, consulting its lawyers and financial agents, and
patronizing its shops. Many urban merchants, taking advantage of better
roads and coach services, went to live in the countryside while
maintaining their businesses in town. Lower down the social scale,
hawkers and peddlers (itinerant traders) carried town-produced goods
into the country areas and sold them there. Conversely, the growing
demand for food in urban areas sucked in men and goods from the
countryside. English drovers braved the old Roman roads and faltering
bridle paths, the only routes available in Welsh counties such as
Caernarvon and Anglesey, in order to purchase meat cattle for London and
other towns. Every year tens of thousands of black cattle from the
Scottish Highlands were driven southward until they reached the
Smithfield meat market in London. Demand for manufactured goods fostered
the spread of inland trade, as did increasing industrial specialization
in the different British regions. Daniel Defoe illustrated this point by
describing the multiple provenance of an affluent man’s suit of clothes:

A coat of woollen cloth from Yorkshire, a waistcoat of cullamancoe
from Norwich, breeches of strong drugget from Devizes and Wiltshire,
stockings of yarn from Westmoreland, a hat of felt from Leicestershire,
gloves of leather from Somerset, shoes from Northampton, buttons from
Macclesfield, or, if metal, from Birmingham, garters from Manchester,
and a shirt of handmade linen from Lancashire or Scotland.

In short, Britain was not a static society, and the towns and the
countryside were not entirely separate spheres. Men and women moved
about to seek pleasure, to do business, to sell goods, to marry, or to
find work; and their ideas and impressions shifted over time.

The revolution in communications Increased mobility was made possible by a revolution in communications.
In the earlier 18th century long-distance travel was rare and the idea
of long-distance travel for pleasure was a contradiction in terms. The
speediest coach journey between London and Cambridge (just 60 miles)
took at least a day. Traveling from the capital to the town of
Shrewsbury by coach took more than three days, and the journey to
Edinburgh could last as long as 10 days. Some travelers made their wills
before starting, as coaches easily overturned on bad roads or in swollen
rivers. By 1750, however, privately financed turnpike roads had spread
from London and its environs to major English provincial centres like
Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, and Birmingham. In the 1760s and
’70s they spread further into Wales and Scotland. The postal service
also improved in this period, though again much more slowly in the
Celtic fringe than in England. In 1765 only 30 Scottish towns enjoyed a
daily postal service.

But the most dramatic advance in inland communication came in the
form of the printed word. London’s first daily newspaper appeared in
1702. By 1760 it had four dailies and six tri-weekly evening papers that
circulated in the country at large as well as in the capital. But the
provinces also generated their own newspapers, their own books,
dictionaries, magazines, printed advertisements, and primers. In 1695
Parliament passed legislation allowing printing presses to be
established freely outside London. Between 1700 and 1750 presses were
founded in 57 English provincial towns, and they proliferated at an even
faster rate in the last third of the 18th century:

By 1725 no fewer than 22 provincial newspapers had emerged. By 1760
there were 37 such papers and by 1780, 50. In Scotland seven newspapers
and periodicals were in existence by 1750, including the monthly Scots
Magazine, which was printed in Edinburgh but could also be purchased
from booksellers at Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling.
Wales had no English-language newspaper until 1804, but many English
papers found their way there.

By 1760 more than nine million newspapers were sold in Britain every
year. Because they were expensive by the standards of the time (three or
four pennies), one copy of a paper may have been shared and read by as
many as 20 different people. There is little doubt that this explosion
of newsprint helped to integrate the nation. All provincial newspapers
and periodicals were parasitic on the London press. They borrowed large
extracts from the more popular and controversial London papers and
pamphlets. Increasingly, too, they broke the law and reprinted London
journalists’ accounts of debates in the House of Commons and House of
Lords (printing parliamentary debates was illegal until 1770).
Consequently, by the time of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), larger
numbers of Britons than ever before had some access to political
information. They were more aware of their country’s military victories
and defeats and more conscious of political scandals and protest.
Politics was no longer just the preserve of the politicians at court, in
Parliament, and in the country houses.

Britain from 1754 to 1783

Henry Pelham died in 1754 and was replaced as head of the administration
by his brother, the duke of Newcastle. Newcastle was shrewd,
intelligent, and hard-working and possessed massive political
experience. But he lacked self-confidence and a certain breadth of
vision, and he was hampered by being in the House of Lords. In 1755
Henry Fox was appointed secretary of state and acted as the
administration’s spokesman in the Commons. Fox’s promotion alienated a
man who was far more interesting and remarkable than either of these
ministers, William Pitt the Elder. Pitt had entered Parliament as an
Opposition MP in the 1730s. In 1746 he had been appointed paymaster
general, a highly lucrative state office. But Pitt, whose ambition was
for fame and recognition rather than money, remained unsatisfied. The
king, however, disliked him and successfully obstructed his career. In
1755 he dismissed Pitt, who began to attack Newcastle on imperial and
foreign policy issues.

Conflict abroadAlthough Britain and France had technically been at peace since 1748,
both powers continued to harass each other in their colonial settlements
in North America, the West Indies, and India. When the French attacked
the British colony of Minorca in May 1756, war broke out; Britain allied
itself with Prussia and France with Austria. Like every 18th-century
war, this one began badly for Britain; it lost Oswego in North America
as well as Minorca. There was an outcry in the press, and Newcastle and
Fox resigned. In November Pitt was appointed secretary of state with
William Cavendish, duke of Devonshire, serving as nominal head of the
new administration. But Pitt, still lacking royal approval or an
adequate majority in the Commons, was dismissed by the king in April
1757. He returned to power in June, forming what was to be a highly
effective wartime coalition with Newcastle. Pitt captured the attention
and imagination of Parliament and of the people by his rhetoric and
charisma; Newcastle employed his experience and industry to raise more
than £160 million during the course of the war. But what cemented the
coalition was Britain’s naval and military successes. In India, where
Britain and France were keen competitors, General Robert Clive captured
the French settlement of Chandernagore and then, with the forces of the
East India Company, defeated the army of Siraj-ud-Dawlah, the nawab
(ruler) of Bengal, at the Battle of Plassey on June 23, 1757. The battle
lasted only a few hours but decided the fate of India by establishing
British dominance in Bengal and the Carnatic, the two most profitable
regions of India for European traders. The year 1757, as a consequence,
is often cited as the beginning of Britain’s supremacy over India, the
start of Calcutta’s significance as the headquarters of the East India
Company, and the beginning of the end of French influence on the
subcontinent. Two years later large sections of the French fleet were
destroyed at the naval battle of Quiberon Bay. When Quebec fell to
General James Wolfe in 1759, British control of Canada was effectively
secured. The island of Guadeloupe was captured in the same dramatic
year, as were French trading bases on the west coast of Africa.

Most of these gains were confirmed by the Treaty of Paris (1763),
though Britain restored Guadeloupe to the French in return for control
of Canada. In the short term these victories resulted in a mood of
patriotic exultation, especially among merchants. They looked to the new
colonies to provide both fresh stocks of raw materials and eager markets
for British manufactured goods: “Trade,” Edmund Burke gloated, “had been
made to flourish by war.” This global victory, however, had been
purchased at a high price. The conquest of Canada freed the American
colonists from the fear of a French invasion from the north. Anxiety on
this score had helped to foster American attachment to Britain. Now
these fears had been relieved, and as early as 1760 some Britons and
Americans anticipated that this would lead to difficulties. Furthermore,
the enormous cost of the conflict led to drastic and sometimes damaging
postwar economies, not least the deterioration of the Royal Navy, which
would be an important factor in Britain’s defeat in the American
Revolution (1775–83). Postwar economies also forced British governments
to explore new fiscal expedients, which aroused discontent at home and
in the American colonies. Finally, the apparent unity and strength of
Britain’s elite during the Seven Years’ War was deceptive: Newcastle and
many of his allies were elderly men, Pitt was difficult and unstable,
and old Whig and Tory alignments had ceased to have much meaning. All
these factors helped to make the early reign of George III a period of
conflict and instability.

Political instability in BritainGeorge II died in October 1760 and was succeeded by his grandson, who
became George III. The new king became one of the most controversial
British monarchs. In the first 10 years of his reign administrations
changed no fewer than seven times. In October 1761 Pitt resigned and
Newcastle was made to share power with the royal favourite, John Stuart,
earl of Bute. In May 1762 Newcastle too resigned, and Bute alone led the
government until his resignation in April 1763. Bute was replaced by
George Grenville, who was in turn dismissed in July 1765. For the next
year Charles Watson-Wentworth, marquess of Rockingham, served as first
lord of the treasury. But in July 1766 Rockingham was sacked and
replaced by Pitt, now elevated to the House of Lords as earl of Chatham.
Chatham soon lapsed into manic depression, and from 1768 to 1770
Augustus Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton, led the government. Only in
1770 did the king find a minister whom he felt he could trust and deal
with: Frederick, Lord North. Such high political instability undoubtedly
hampered British efforts to resolve the problem of its American
colonies.

But division and instability were not just confined to the court and
parliament. The 1760s were a period of bad harvests, rising food prices,
and sporadic unemployment. These economic and social problems helped to
fuel the public agitation over John Wilkes, a Protestant dissenter and
the son of a London malt distiller. In 1757 he bribed a rotten borough
to elect him as its member of Parliament. An interesting, irresponsible,
and cheerfully immoral man, Wilkes became well known in London society
but failed to obtain a government post. His disappointment, as well as a
bent toward iconoclasm, pushed him into opposition journalism. In April
1763 issue number 45 of his paper, the North Briton (a reference to the
then chief minister Lord Bute, who was Scottish), was judged seditious.
The government reacted by issuing a general warrant under which Wilkes
and 48 additional persons were arrested. But Sir Charles Pratt, chief
justice of the court of commons pleas, determined that this was a breach
of Wilkes’s parliamentary privilege, and he acquitted him. Soon after
Wilkes fled to France to avoid another trial, this time for obscenity.
In 1764 he was expelled from the Commons and tried in absentia for
sedition, libel, and obscenity. But, as he did not return, he was
declared an outlaw for impeding royal justice. In 1768, deeply in debt,
he returned and was elected MP for the county of Middlesex, the most
populous county constituency in England.

Since Wilkes was still an outlaw, Parliament declared him ineligible
for election, and for a time he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Due in large part to Wilkes’s organizational and propaganda skills, this
precipitated a nationwide agitation; Wilkes was seen not only in England
but also in the American colonies as a martyr for liberty. His plight
raised the question of whether the will of the people or the decision of
a Parliament elected by only a fraction of the people was supreme. In
1769 the Society for the Supporters of the Bill of Rights was founded to
aid Wilkes and to press for parliamentary reform. Its members demanded
parliamentary representation for important new towns such as Birmingham,
Leeds, and Manchester, the abolition of rotten boroughs, and general
admission to the franchise for men of movable property (i.e., traders,
merchants, and professionals). The English, as well as the American
colonists, were becoming more interested in the connection between
parliamentary representation (or the lack of it) and the obligation to
pay taxes.

The American Revolution

The American issue was the final and most volatile element in the
instability of the 1760s. Tension mounted, as far as British governments
were concerned, primarily for two reasons. First, from this decade
onward imperial organization received increased attention, and attempts
were made to tighten British rule in Ireland and India as well as in the
American colonies, a development that caused friction. Fiscal need was
the second and more pressing problem. In 1763 the national debt stood at
£114 million, and it continued to grow. Since the burden of taxation was
already heavy for Britons, the government naturally looked to other
sources of revenue. This was the background to George Grenville’s
decision, in 1765, to pass the Stamp Act, a measure designed to raise
revenue in the American colonies by putting a tax on all legal and
commercial papers. But it stirred up intense resentment in the colonies
and, indirectly, in Britain, when the Americans boycotted British goods.
In 1766 Rockingham repealed the Stamp Act while maintaining Parliament’s
right to legislate for the colonies. In 1767 Charles Townshend, then
chancellor of exchequer, levied duties on certain imports into the
colonies, including a duty on tea, and linked this proposal with plans
to remodel colonial government. These measures exacerbated American
discontent, though Parliament was not made to realize how much until
1774.

Historians have long disagreed over the question of how far George
III himself was responsible for these tumultuous events. The Declaration
of Independence (1776) unambiguously condemned the king as a tyrant. The
so-called 19th-century British Whig historians also criticized the king
in very harsh terms, maintaining, at their most extreme, that as a young
prince he was indoctrinated with archaic and inflated ideas of royal
power. When he came to the throne, he supposedly ousted his Whig
ministers, replacing them with Tories, who were more sympathetic to
royal ambitions. His arbitrary aims and policies, it was claimed,
provoked the Wilkite agitation in Britain and drove the American
colonists to rebel. George was consequently held directly responsible
for the break-up of the British Empire. Finally, he was charged with
employing bribery and corruption to persuade Parliament to do his
bidding.

Twentieth-century historians, in particular the Polish-born scholar
Lewis Namier, have revised many of these extreme judgments. It has now
been established that the king was neither educated in arbitrary ideas,
nor did he preside over a Tory revival. Ministers such as Bute,
Grenville, Townshend, and North regarded themselves as Whigs. But by the
1760s and ’70s “Whig” and “Tory” were terms that had lost precise
ideological significance, and the breakdown of these old partisan
divisions undoubtedly contributed to ministerial instability at this
time. There is little evidence that the king used corrupt influence to
make Parliament accept his American policy. Indeed, it is unlikely that
he initially even possessed an American policy; royal correspondence
shows that he was rarely closely interested in American affairs before
1774. The colonists’ drift toward opposition and independence was
probably caused as much by their distance from London and their
increasing prosperity as it was by British fiscal measures.

But George III cannot be entirely exonerated. When he succeeded, he
was only 22, immature, idealistic, and not well-educated. His
appointment of his decorative favourite, Lord Bute, was a breach of the
convention that monarchs should choose chief ministers possessed of
political experience and proven abilities. In his dealings with other
politicians George showed himself throughout his reign to be
intransigent and obstinate, and he often confused his own personal
feelings with the public welfare. He can scarcely be blamed for wanting
to retain such an important part of his empire as the American colonies,
but he can legitimately be criticized for insisting that the American
war be continued after 1780, by which time it had become clear to his
chief minister, Lord North, that Britain had lost.

Domestic responses to the American RevolutionEven at its outbreak in 1775 British attitudes to the American war were
mixed. Many Protestant dissenters regarded the Americans as their
brethren, for political and religious reasons. The City of London, and
other commercial centres such as Glasgow, Norwich, and Newcastle,
objected to the war because it disrupted highly profitable
Anglo-American trade. Many British newspapers and cartoons adopted a
pacifist and sometimes even a pro-American line. Other Britons believed,
with George III, that rebellion against a monarch was sinful and that
Parliament’s authority must be preserved. Conventional patriotism became
stronger after 1778, when France, Spain, and belatedly the Dutch, allied
themselves with the Americans against Britain.

The next two years proved profoundly difficult. Fears that the French
would invade Ireland as a prelude to invading the British mainland led
ministers to encourage the creation of an Irish volunteer force some
40,000 strong. The Irish Protestant elite, led by Henry Grattan, used
this force and the French threat to extract concessions from London. In
1783 Ireland was granted legislative independence, though it remained
subject to George III. Declining British fortunes abroad also revived
the issue of parliamentary reform. By 1779 three different reform groups
had emerged, all of whom favoured peace with America. The marquess of
Rockingham and his parliamentary supporters (including his secretary,
Edmund Burke) wanted to reduce official corruption and George III’s
influence in government. Another group, led by Christopher Wyvill, a
one-time Anglican clergyman, wanted a moderate reform of the
representative system. Wyvill and some of his supporters played with the
idea of a national association, an assembly of reformers from each
county in Britain, that would exist parallel to Parliament and be
superior to it in constitutional zeal. A third small group, led by
Charles James Fox, a Whig MP, and by former Wilkite activists, wanted
more extensive political reform, including the secret ballot and annual
general elections. In 1780 they founded the Society for Constitutional
Information, which was designed to build public support for political
change through the systematic production and distribution of libertarian
propaganda.

It was unlikely that any of these reforms would be implemented. But
the Gordon Riots of June 1780 made it certain that they would not be. In
1778 Parliament had made minor concessions to British Roman Catholics,
who were excluded from civil rights. Anti-Catholic prejudice, however,
had been a powerful emotion in Britain since the Reformation in the 16th
century, and Roman Catholicism tended to be associated by many with
political absolutism and persecution. A movement to repeal the Catholic
Relief Act of 1778, the Protestant Association, started in Scotland
under the leadership of an unstable individual called Lord George
Gordon. The movement reached London and exploded there in riots that
lasted for eight days. More than 300 people were killed, and more damage
was done to property than would be done in Paris during the French
Revolution. For a time these riots gave reform and popular agitation a
bad name. To many, the very name of Wyvill’s National Association was
dangerously suggestive of the Protestant Association, and the
parliamentary reform movement lapsed until the 1790s.

Disasters at home were followed by further disasters abroad. Late in
1781 Britain learned of General Charles Cornwallis’s surrender in
America at the Battle of Yorktown. Parliamentary pressure to end the war
now became irresistible. When in March 1782 Lord North’s majority in the
Commons fell to nine votes, he resigned, against the wishes of George
III. A new administration, formed under Lord Rockingham, was committed
to peace with America and moderate constitutional reform at home. When
Rockingham died in July 1782, William Petty, earl of Shelburne, became
first lord of the treasury. In November of that year it was he who had
the thankless task of concluding peace with the Americans and formally
acknowledging their independence and British defeat in the Treaty of
Paris.

Britain from 1783 to 1815

Defeat abroad and division at home led many Britons to believe that
their country was in irreversible decline. The war had cost more than
£236.4 million and had apparently brought only humiliation and the loss
of one of the most profitable regions of the British Empire. Yet
recovery was rapid, and by the time Britain again went to war—in 1793,
against revolutionary France—it was wealthier and more powerful than it
had been at the beginning of George III’s reign.

In February 1783 Britain made a far from disadvantageous peace with
its European enemies. Minorca and Florida were ceded to the Spanish, but
Gibraltar was retained. France was given settlements in Senegal and
Tobago, but Britain recovered other West Indian islands lost during the
war. Holland gave Britain freedom of navigation in its spice islands and
an important trading base in India. Nonetheless, this peace damaged
Shelburne’s reputation, and he resigned. A coalition administration was
formed, led by Lord North and Charles James Fox. The king disliked it
and ruthlessly sabotaged it. The Fox–North coalition planned to cement
its authority by passing a bill to reform the government of British
settlements in India, previously administered by the East India Company
alone. The India Bill passed the Commons but, like every other piece of
legislation not directly concerned with taxation, it had to be approved
by a majority in the House of Lords. In advance of the vote the king let
it be known that he would regard any peer who supported the bill with
disfavour. The Lords duly threw the bill out in December 1783, providing
the king with an excuse to dismiss Fox and North and replace them with
William Pitt the Younger, the second son of the late earl of Chatham.
The general election of 1784 supplied Pitt with a parliamentary
majority.

William Pitt the Younger Pitt lived and died a bachelor, totally obsessed with political office.
He was clever, single-minded, confident of his own abilities, and a
natural politician. But perhaps his greatest asset in the early 1780s
was his youth. He had entered Parliament in 1780 and was just 24 when he
became first minister in 1783. Consequently, he was not associated in
the public mind with the American debacle but seemed instead to promise
a new era. Moreover, although he and George III never developed a close
relationship, he did enjoy the king’s support. Knowing that the
alternative to Pitt was Fox (whom he hated), the king dealt with Pitt in
a responsible manner. In 1788–89 the king suffered a major bout of
insanity (or, according to some scholars, porphyria, a hereditary blood
disease). Although he recovered, he thereafter interfered in politics
far less than in his early reign. Pitt in turn treated the king
tactfully. He dropped his early enthusiasm for parliamentary reform, and
in 1801 he resigned over the issue of Roman Catholic emancipation (the
extension of civil rights to Catholics) rather than force the king to
accept it.

Royal support aided Pitt’s control of his cabinet and political
patronage. But what sustained him most in the 1780s and early 1790s was
the quality and success of his measures. He reduced the national debt by
£10 million between 1784 and 1793, in part by increasing tax revenue. He
fostered legitimate trade and reduced smuggling by cutting import duties
on certain commodities such as tea. In 1786 he signed an important
commercial agreement, the Eden Treaty, with France. It was in keeping
with the argument made by the economist Adam Smith in his The Wealth of
Nations (1776) that Britain should be less economically dependent on
trade with America and become more adventurous in exploring trading
opportunities in continental Europe. At home, Pitt strove for cheaper
and more efficient administration; for example, he set up a stationery
department to supply government offices with the necessary paper at a
more economical rate. Abroad, he restored Britain’s links with
continental Europe and implemented imperial reorganization. In 1788 he
signed the Triple Alliance between Britain, Prussia, and Holland,
thereby ensuring that in a future war his country would not be bereft of
allies as it had been during the American Revolution. In 1790 he
demonstrated Britain’s renewed power and prestige by negotiating a peace
between Austria and Turkey. In 1784 he passed his own India Act,
creating a board of control regulating Indian affairs and the East India
Company. The board’s members were nominated by the king from among the
privy councillors. Finally, in 1791 the Canada Constitutional Act was
passed. London became responsible for the government of both Lower and
Upper Canada, but both provinces were given representative assemblies.

Economic growth and prosperityMany of Pitt’s reforms and policies, such as his India Act, had been
devised by previous ministers. But even though he did not originate all
of his schemes, Pitt nonetheless deserves credit for actually
implementing them. For all his priggish ruthlessness and occasional
dishonesties (perhaps because of them), Pitt undoubtedly contributed to
the restoration of national confidence; indeed, for many people, he
became its very personification. But British recovery had wider and more
complex causes than just one man’s measures. At bottom, it was rooted in
accelerating economic growth and unprecedented national prosperity:

These figures illustrate two striking points. First, in the 1770s
British export performance and industrial productivity were perceptibly
damaged by the American war. But, second, Britain’s economic recovery
after the war was rapid and dramatic. Particularly noticeable is the
fact that the wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France (1793–1802
and 1803–15) did not slow Britain’s buoyant prosperity. Although
Napoleon tried to blockade Britain in 1808 and again in 1811–12, he
never succeeded in cutting the lifeline of its trade. In the period
1794–96 British exports averaged £21.7 million per annum. In the period
1804–06 the equivalent figure was £37.5 million, and during 1814–16,
£44.4 million. These figures demonstrate how quickly Britain regained
its American markets after 1783 and how extensive its other colonial
markets were. But they are also one of many signs that the nation was
experiencing the first Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution Some historians have questioned whether the term Industrial Revolution
can really be applied to the economic transformation of late 18th- and
early 19th-century Britain. They point out that in terms of employment
the industrial sector may not have overtaken the agricultural sector
until the 1850s and that even then the average unit of production
employed only 10 people. Large, anonymous factories did not become
common until the late 19th century. Other scholars have argued, rightly,
that industry did not suddenly take off in the 1780s and that even in
1700 Britain was a more industrialized state than its European
competitors. But, despite all these qualifications, the available
evidence suggests that by 1800 Britain was by far the most
industrialized state in the world and that, because of this, its rate of
economic growth must have accelerated in the last third of the 18th
century.

Perhaps the most powerful evidence one can cite for these statements
(which are inevitably controversial, given the ferocity and rapid
fluctuations of the debate on the Industrial Revolution) is Britain’s
ability to sustain an unprecedented growth in its population from 1780
onward without suffering from major famines or acute unemployment. In
1770 the population was about 8.3 million. By 1790 it had reached 9.7
million; by 1811, 12.1 million; and by 1821, 14.2 million. By the latter
date, it is estimated that 60 percent of Britain’s population was 25
years of age or below. By comparison, while a similar rate of
demographic growth occurred in Ireland, there was no Irish Industrial
Revolution. Partly as a result of this, Ireland suffered the great
famine in the 1840s, whereas there was no similar famine in Britain.

To say this is not to deny the dark side of early industrialization.
The conditions of work were often brutal, particularly for the young.
Industrial safety was minimal, and environmental pollution and unguarded
machines led to horrific injuries. Mechanization ruined the livelihoods
of some skilled craftsmen, most notably the handloom weavers.
Nonetheless, it is probable that without industrialization the social
costs of rapid population growth in Britain would have been far greater.

Although it is not easy to account for Britain’s early
industrialization, some facts stand out. Britain, unlike its prime
European rival, France, was a small, compact island. Except in northern
Scotland, it had no major forests or mountains to disrupt or impede its
internal communications. The country possessed a range of natural ports
facing the Atlantic, plenty of coastal shipping, and a good system of
internal waterways. By the 1760s there were already 1,000 miles of
inland canals in Britain; over the next 70 years 3,000 more miles of
canals were constructed. Britain was also richly endowed with coal and
iron ore, and these minerals were often located close together in
counties such as Staffordshire, Northumberland, Lancashire, and
Yorkshire.

Most importantly perhaps, Britain could draw on an ample supply of
customers for its goods, both at home and overseas. Its colonies fed it
with raw materials while also serving as captive customers. And its
expanding population meant buoyant demand at home even in wartime when
foreign trade was disrupted. The best illustration of these advantages
is the cotton industry. Its Indian settlements supplied Britain with
ever-increasing amounts of raw cotton, and annual cloth production
soared from 50,000 pieces of cloth in 1770 to 400,000 pieces in 1800.
Much of this output in textiles was consumed by the home market. Some
scholars have argued that the increased wearing of cotton (which could
be easily washed) as distinct from woolen clothes (which could not)
improved health conditions, thus contributing to Britain’s population
expansion.

Britain during the French Revolution The outbreak of the French Revolution in July 1789 initially heightened
British national confidence. Some Britons welcomed it in the belief that
civil commotion would weaken their prime European competitor. Many
others, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Godwin, and
Mary Wollstonecraft among them, felt confident that revolutionary France
would become a new and enlightened state and that this process would in
turn accelerate political, religious, and social change in Britain. By
contrast, Edmund Burke’s fierce denunciation in Reflections on the
Revolution in France (1790) met with little immediate support, even
among the political elite. Only when the new French regime guillotined
Louis XVI and threatened to invade Holland did mainstream opinion in
Britain begin to change and harden. In February 1793 Britain and France
went to war.

There has been much debate over the degree to which British opinion
on the war was united. Some historians have argued that Thomas Paine’s
best-seller, The Rights of Man (1791–92), fostered mass enthusiasm for
democratic reform and mass alienation from Britain’s ruling class. Paine
attacked the monarchy, aristocracy, and all forms of privilege, and he
demanded not only manhood suffrage and peace but also public education,
old-age pensions, maternity benefits, and full employment. While he did
not directly advocate a redistribution of property to fund these
reforms, some contemporary radicals certainly did. A Newcastle
schoolmaster, Thomas Spence, for example, issued a penny periodical,
Pig’s Meat (a reference to Burke’s savage description of the British
masses as “the swinish multitude”), calling for the forcible
nationalization of land.

These developments in radical ideology were made more significant by
simultaneous developments in radical organization. In January 1792 a
small coterie of London artisans led by a shoemaker, Thomas Hardy,
formed a society to press for manhood suffrage. It cost only a shilling
to join, and the weekly subscription was set at a penny so as to attract
as many members as possible. These plebeian reformers, making use of
Britain’s growing communications network, corresponded with similar
societies that had sprung up in response to the Revolution in the
English provinces and in Scotland. In October 1793 Scottish radicals
held what they styled a British Convention in Edinburgh, and a few of
the English corresponding societies managed to send delegates there.
They issued a manifesto demanding universal manhood suffrage and annual
elections and affirming their faith in the principles of the French
Revolution.

In terms of the number of men involved, these initiatives were always
limited. Corresponding societies were far more widespread in London and
the industrial north than in predominantly rural areas such as central
Wales. Only a small proportion of rural and industrial labourers, as
distinct from artisans, seems to have joined them. Even in the radical
bastion of Sheffield (population 31,000) the local corresponding society
attracted only 2,000 members, and most of these did not attend its
meetings regularly. A minority of these activists were overtly
Francophile and some may have wanted a French invasion of Britain and
the establishment of a republican regime. Most corresponding-society
members, however, seem to have been deeply attached to the British
constitution and to have wanted only to reform it. But if these
societies were not extensive or proto-revolutionary, they were still
important and recognized as such. Contemporaries realized that for the
first time in the 18th century working men throughout the nation were
beginning to organize to achieve political change.

Pitt’s ministry acted ruthlessly to suppress them. Leading Scottish
radicals were arrested and given harsh sentences. In England habeas
corpus was temporarily suspended, laws were passed prohibiting public
meetings and demonstrations, and Thomas Hardy was tried for treason but
acquitted. By 1795 the corresponding societies had formally ceased to
meet. A minority of radicals, however, continued to agitate for reform
in secret, some of them engaging in sedition. Particularly prominent in
this respect were Irish dissidents. By now large numbers of Irish
immigrants lived and worked in British towns. Some of them sympathized
with the Irish Rising of 1798 and formed secret societies to overturn
the government. Several Irish agitators were involved in the Spithead
and Nore naval mutinies of 1797 that for a time immobilized the Royal
Navy. In 1803 an Irishman and former shipmate of Horatio Nelson, Edward
Despard, was executed in London for plotting a coup d’état. Just how
dangerous and well-supported these various incidents were is uncertain.
But there can be no doubt that successive British wartime
administrations felt obliged to devote extensive resources to
maintaining order at home. even though they were also fighting an
unprecedentedly massive war abroad.

The Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were massive in their geographic scope, ranging, as
far as Britain was concerned, over all of the five continents. They were
massive, too, in terms of expense. From 1793 to the Battle of Waterloo
in June 1815 the wars cost Britain more than £1,650,000,000. Only 25
percent of this sum was raised by government loans, the rest coming
largely from taxation, not least from the income tax that was introduced
in 1798. But the wars were massive most of all in terms of manpower.
Between 1789 and 1815 the British army had to expand more than sixfold,
to about a quarter of a million men. The Royal Navy, bedrock of British
defense, aggression, trade, and empire, grew further and faster still.
Before the wars it had employed 16,000 men; by the end of them, it
employed more than 140,000. Because there was an acute danger between
1797 and 1805 that France would invade Britain, the civil defense force
also had to be expanded. The militia was increased, and by 1803 more
than 380,000 men were acting as volunteers in home-based cavalry and
infantry regiments. In all, one in four adult males in Britain may have
been in uniform by the early 19th century.

Despite these financial and military exertions, British governments
found it extremely difficult to defeat France. In part this was because
Pitt the Younger’s abilities were more suited to peace than to war. But
the main reason the conflict was so protracted was France’s overwhelming
military superiority on land. The historian Paul Kennedy has written of
British and French power in this period:

Like the whale and the elephant, each was by far the largest creature
in its own domain. But British control of the sea routes could not by
itself destroy the French hegemony in Europe, nor could Napoleon’s
military mastery reduce the islanders to surrender.

The first coalition of anti-French states, consisting of Britain,
Russia, Prussia, Spain, Holland, and Austria, disintegrated by 1796. A
British expeditionary force to aid Flanders and Holland was defeated,
and Holland was occupied by the French. By 1797 the cost of maintaining
its own forces and subsidizing those of its European allies had brought
Britain to the verge of bankruptcy. For a time the Bank of England
suspended payments in cash.

The British response to these developments was to concentrate on home
defense and to consolidate its imperial and naval assets. Britain won a
string of important naval victories in 1797, and in 1798 at the Battle
of the Nile, Nelson defeated the French fleet anchored off Egypt,
thereby safeguarding British possessions in India. Pitt also tried to
solve the problem of Ireland. In 1801 the Act of Union took effect
amalgamating Ireland with Great Britain and creating the United Kingdom.
The Dublin Parliament ceased to exist, and Ireland’s Protestant voters
were allowed to return 100 MPs to Westminster. Pitt had hoped to sweeten
the union by accompanying it with Roman Catholic emancipation, that is,
by allowing Irish Catholics to vote and hold state office if they
possessed the necessary property qualifications. George III opposed this
concession, however, and Catholics were not admitted to full British
citizenship until 1829. Pitt resigned and was succeeded as first
minister by Henry Addington, the deeply conservative son of a successful
doctor. It was his administration that signed the short-lived Treaty of
Amiens with France in 1802.

War broke out again in May 1803. Once again, Britain demonstrated its
power at sea but, until 1809, was unable to win substantial victories on
land. Its fleet captured St. Lucia, Tobago, Dutch Guiana, the Cape of
Good Hope, French Guiana, Java, Martinique, and other West Indian and
African territories. Most importantly, in October 1805 Nelson defeated
the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar, thereby preventing an
invasion of Britain. Napoleon, however, inflicted serious military
defeats on the Austrians, Prussians, and Russians and invaded Spain. At
one stage Britain’s only remaining European allies were Sweden,
Portugal, Sicily, and Sardinia; in short, the country was without any
significant allies at all. Political leadership was uneven and sometimes
weak, and the long duration of the war and its damaging effects on trade
aroused increasing criticism at home. Pitt had resumed his post as
chancellor of the Exchequer and first lord of the Treasury in May 1804,
but he died worn out by work and drink in January 1806. None of the
three men who succeeded him as premier, William Wyndham Grenville, Baron
Grenville (1806–07), William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, duke of Portland
(1807–09), and Spencer Perceval (1809–12), was able to establish himself
in power for very long or to capture the public imagination.

Yet the war began to turn in Britain’s favour in 1809, in large part
because of Napoleon’s strategic mistakes. When the Spanish rebelled
against French rule, substantial British armed forces were dispatched to
assist them under the command of Arthur Wellesley, later duke of
Wellington. Spain’s new anti-French posture meant that Spain was once
again open to British manufactured goods, as were its colonies in Latin
America. For a time this helped to reduce the commercial community’s
criticism of the conduct of the war. But demands for peace revived
during the slump of 1811–12 and intensified when British relations with
the United States, a vitally important market, began to deteriorate. One
of the main irritants was the so-called Orders in Council, prohibiting
neutral powers (like the United States) from trading with France. In
1812 commercial lobbies in Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, and Birmingham
succeeded in getting the orders repealed, an indication of the growing
political weight exercised by the manufacturing interest in Britain.
Although this failed to prevent the Anglo-American War of 1812, neither
Britain’s trade nor its war efforts in Europe was seriously damaged by
that conflict. Russia’s break with Napoleon in 1812 opened up large
markets for British goods in the Baltic and in northern Europe.

From 1812 onward Napoleon’s defeat was merely a matter of time. In
June 1813 Wellington defeated the French army in Spain at Victoria. The
forces of Austria, Sweden, Prussia, and Russia expelled the French from
Germany in the Battle of Leipzig (October 1813). This victory allowed
Wellington, who had already crossed the Pyrenees, to advance upon
Bayonne and Toulouse. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, the
secretary of state for foreign affairs, played the leading part in
negotiating the Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814, which clarified allied
war aims (including the expulsion of Napoleon), tightened allied unity,
and made provision for a durable European settlement. The subsequent
squabbles over the spoils of war were interrupted for a time when
Napoleon escaped from his genteel exile on Elba and fought his last
campaign from March to June 1815. Although his final defeat at Waterloo
was accomplished by the allied armies, Britain secured prime credit.
This textbook victory was to help Britain dominate Europe and much of
the world for the next 100 years.

Imperial expansionBritain’s ultimate success against Napoleon, like its importance in this
period as a whole, owed much to its wealth—its capacity to raise loans
through its financial machinery and revenue through the prosperity of
its inhabitants and the extent of its trade. But British success also
owed much to the power of its navy and to the energy and aggressiveness
of its ruling class, which was particularly apparent in the imperial
expansion of this period. Britain sought to extend its control by
legislation, by war, and by individual enterprise. The Acts of Union
with Scotland in 1707 and with Ireland in 1801 tightened London’s rule
over its Celtic periphery, as did the laws passed to erode the autonomy
of the Scottish Highlands after the rebellion of 1745. In the 1760s
Britain sought not only to increase the revenue it gained from its North
American colonies but also to shore up its military and administrative
influence there. These measures failed, but Britain had more success
with its Indian possessions. Between 1768 and 1774, in fact, the House
of Commons devoted far more time to Indian affairs than to those of
North America. Its discussions culminated in the passing of the India
Act in 1784, which indicatively increased the government’s authority
over the East India Company and therefore over Britain’s possessions in
India.

Every major war Britain engaged in during this period increased its
colonial power. The Seven Years’ War was particularly successful in this
respect, and so were the Napoleonic Wars. Between 1793 and 1815 Britain
gained 20 colonies, including Tobago, Mauritius, Malta, St. Lucia, the
Cape, and the United Provinces of Āgra and Oudh in India. By 1820 the
total population of the territories it governed was 200 million, 26
percent of the world’s total population. Not all of these acquisitions
were formally directed by London. Captain James Cook’s explorations of
Australia and New Zealand after 1770 were in part an exercise in private
enterprise and scientific inquiry. Nonetheless, British settlement of
Australia at New South Wales began in 1787, in part because the mother
country needed another repository for transported convicts previously
sent to the North American colonies. The East India Company also
retained considerable initiative in its military strategies. In 1819 Sir
Thomas Stamford Raffles seized Singapore for the company and not on
London’s instructions. But, however acquired, all these acquisitions
added to Britain’s power and reputation. It was no accident, perhaps,
that its two national anthems, “God Save the King” and “Rule Britannia,”
were composed in this period. For the privileged and the rich, this was
preeminently an era of confidence and arrogance.

Linda J. Colley

Great Britain, 1815–1914

Britain after the Napoleonic Wars

State and societyThe relationship between state and society in Britain after the
Napoleonic Wars assumed the shape that was to remain apparent into the
20th and 21st centuries. In contrast to most other European societies,
many of the functions performed by central government elsewhere were
performed in Britain by groups of self-governing citizens, either on an
elective, but unpaid, official basis, as in the institutions of local
government, or through voluntary organizations. Britain in the 19th
century did not develop a strong bureaucratic element with interests of
its own, a strong sense of popular expectations concerning the role of
the state, nor a strong popular sense of identification with it. This
understanding of the limited role of government (contemporaries would
have used this term rather than the “state”) reflected and served to
further entrench what in the 18th century had become a relatively
homogeneous and stable society—relative to the great majority of
European states, that is. This was particularly so after the integration
of Scotland into what was increasingly, with the clear exception of
Ireland, a United Kingdom. Internal differences of course remained
strong, but, nonetheless, linguistic and geographical unity was
paralleled by the increasing integration of communications, seen in the
improved road system of the first three decades of the new century, a
precursor of the integration later evident in the railway system.

However, this decentralized state combined considerable strength with
considerable flexibility; indeed, these two characteristics were
mutually reinforcing. Even in the 18th century, central government
showed sensitivity to the dangers of trespassing upon the limits of
consent. Although in no sense a democratic state, this combination of
strength and liberality was made possible by the close link between
central government and the decentralized channels through which it
ruled. If ruling at a distance often, this rule was all the stronger for
being experienced as a kind of freedom. This experience in turn
strengthened central government, enabling it all the more firmly to
coordinate decentralized rule.

Nonetheless, if liberal, the late 18th- and early 19th-century state
was marked by a strong sense of rights, enforceable by law and enjoyed
by all members of the community, however unequally, including rights of
subsistence by means of the poor-relief system. However limited, the
propertied and the powerful felt it their responsibility to uphold these
rights, rights that they and the poor and unpropertied regarded as the
birthright of the “Free-Born Englishman.” Those with governmental
responsibility did not generally try to exclude the mass of the
population from at least some participation in the regulation of their
own lives. In the courts, by the means of petition, and through
attendance at parish meetings, for example, the less powerful could
exert some influence. This influence, among both the high and the low in
society, was felt to operate at the level of the representation of
communities, rather than the individual, and was reflected in the system
of parliamentary representation itself. This sense of rights also took
the form of strong attachments to customary observances and
regulations—for instance, those associated with particular trades and
localities, such as the parish. The country was governed through a
process of negotiation and reciprocity, albeit between unequal sides, in
which what has been called a “rebellious but traditional popular
culture” set limits on the power of the governors, while at the same
time respecting this power when justly implemented.

This was to change in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. The moves
of William Pitt, the Younger, toward more professional, economically
liberal, politically authoritarian government were carried forward by
the “liberal Tory” governments of the years after 1815. This new
understanding of government built upon the old liberality of the
18th-century state but divested it of many of the rights intrinsic to
it. This involved a reconstruction of the roles of Parliament, the
executive, and the party, with the purpose of reducing these to the
provision of a framework within which individuals and institutions could
operate with maximum safety and freedom. While retaining and modernizing
its basic public order and foreign policy functions—thereby retaining at
the centre a strong directive power—this new notion of government
involved stripping away what were perceived to be the great premodern
accretions of intrusive legislation, regulation, and custom,
particularly in relation to economic activity and the “Old Corruption”
of the ancien régime.

Instead, what would be constructed were mechanisms that would
facilitate the automatic operations of the “natural order” believed to
lie beneath and to be prevented from its beneficial operation by the
unnecessary weight of custom and regulation created over the centuries.
Liberated in this way, it was thought, individuals and the economy would
be set free to achieve their full potential. This understanding of
government was supported by particular appropriations of political
economy, utilitarian thought, and evangelical religion, whereby the
workings of the political system could be equated with the workings of
Providence. This understanding of government conflicted with older
notions of rights and responsibilities, so that arguments about the role
of a strong central state and institutional and personal freedom, as
well as the question of what was public and what was private, were at
the heart of political discussion throughout the century and, indeed,
through the course of the 20th century too. These arguments were
reflected in the uneven movement toward the liberalization of society
and the economy in the first two decades of the century, though of the
direction of this movement there could be no doubt.

The political situationThe end of the long wars against Napoleon did not usher in a period of
peace and contentment in Britain. Instead, the postwar period was marked
by open social conflicts, most of them exacerbated by an economic slump.
As the long-run process of industrialization continued, with a rising
population and a cyclic pattern of relative prosperity and depression,
many social conflicts centred on questions of what contemporaries called
“corn and currency”—that is, agriculture and credit. Others were
directly related to the growth of factories and towns and to the
parallel development of middle-class and working-class consciousness.

The agriculturalists, who were predominant in Parliament, attempted
to safeguard their wartime economic position by securing, in 1815, a new
Corn Law designed to keep up grain prices and rents by taxing imported
grain. Their political power enabled them to maintain economic
protection. Many of the industrialists, an increasingly vociferous group
outside Parliament, resented the passing of the Corn Law because it
favoured the landed interests. Others objected to the return in 1819 of
the gold standard, which was put into effect in 1821. Whatever their
outlook, industrialists were beginning to demand a voice in Parliament.

The term middle classes began to be used more frequently in social
and political debate. So too were working class and classes. Recent
historical research indicates that the awareness of class identity was
not simply the direct outcome of economic and social experience but was
articulated in terms of public discourse, particularly in the political
sphere. For example, claims to be middle-class were actively contested
in the political life of the time, and different groups, for different
purposes, sought to appropriate or stigmatize the term. In the same
manner, working-class identity was formed differently by different
political and social movements, and the poorer sections of society were
politically mobilized around collective identities that were not only
about class but also about the poor (versus the propertied) and
especially “the people” (versus the privileged and the powerful). This
understanding of how collective identity was politically shaped
according to the cultural contexts of the time has marked the formation
of collective identities more broadly in British history down to the
present.

Town and village labourers were also unrepresented in Parliament, and
they bore the main brunt of the postwar difficulties. Bad harvests and
high food prices left them hungry and discontented, but it was as much
their political as their economic situation that served as the basis of
their mobilization. However, new forms of industrial production, as well
as the growth of towns with structures of communication that were quite
different from those of villages or preindustrial urban communities,
enabled new kinds of political appeal and of collective identity to take
root. There were radical riots in 1816, in 1817, and particularly in
1819, the year of the Peterloo Massacre, when there was a clash in
Manchester between workers and troops of the yeomanry, or local
citizenry.

The Six Acts of 1819, associated with Henry Addington, Viscount
Sidmouth, the home secretary, were designed to reduce disturbances and
to check the extension of radical propaganda and organization. They
provoked sharp criticism even from the more moderate Whigs as well as
from the radicals, and they did not dispel the fear and suspicion that
seemed to be threatening the stability of the whole social order. There
was a revival of confidence after 1821, as economic conditions improved
and the government itself embarked on a program of economic reform. Even
after the collapse of the economic boom of 1824–25, no attempt was made
to return to policies of repression.

There was a change of tone, if not of principle, in foreign policy,
as in home affairs, after the suicide of the foreign secretary, Robert
Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. Castlereagh, who had represented Britain
at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, pursued a policy of nonintervention,
refusing to follow up the peace settlement he had signed, which entailed
provisions for converting the Quadruple Alliance of the victorious
wartime allies into an instrument of police action to suppress
liberalism and nationalism anywhere in Europe. His successor at the
Foreign Office, George Canning, propounded British objectives with a
strong appeal to British public opinion and emphasized differences
between British viewpoints and interests and those of the European great
powers more than their common interests. In 1824 he recognized the
independence of Spain’s American colonies, declaring in a famous phrase
that he was calling “the New World into existence to redress the balance
of the Old.” In 1826 he used British force to defend constitutional
government in Portugal, whereas in the tension-ridden area of the
eastern Mediterranean, he supported the cause of Greek independence. His
policies and styles were reasserted by Henry John Temple, Viscount
Palmerston, who became foreign minister in 1830.

The situation in Ireland heralded the end of one pillar of the old
order—namely, legal restrictions on the civil liberties of Roman
Catholics. Irish disorders centred, as they had since the Act of Union
in 1801, on the issue of Catholic emancipation, a favourite cause of the
Whigs, who had been out of power since 1807. During the 18th century,
Catholics in England had achieved a measure of unofficial toleration,
but in Ireland restrictions against Catholics holding office were still
rigorously enforced. In 1823 Daniel O’Connell, a Dublin Roman Catholic
lawyer, founded the Catholic Association, the object of which was to
give Roman Catholics in Ireland the same political and civil freedoms as
Protestants. Employing pioneering techniques of organization, involving
the mobilization of the large numbers of the poor and the excluded in
great open-air demonstrations, O’Connell introduced a new form of mass
politics that galvanized opinion in Ireland while at the same time
mobilized radical allies in England. The result was the passing of the
Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829.

The death in June 1830 of George IV (whose reign had begun in 1820)
heralded the end of another pillar of the old order, the unreformed
system of parliamentary representation. In a year of renewed economic
distress and of revolution in France, when the political reform issue
was being raised again at public meetings in different parts of Britain,
Wellington, the military hero of the Napoleonic Wars who had assumed the
premiership in 1828, had not made matters easier for himself by
expressing complete confidence in the constitution as it stood. In
consequence he resigned, and the new king, William IV (1830–37), invited
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, to form a government. Grey’s cabinet was
predominantly aristocratic—including Canningites as well as Whigs—but
the new prime minister, like most of his colleagues, was committed to
introducing a measure of parliamentary reform. For this reason, 1830
marked a real parting of the ways. At last there was a break in the
continuity of regime that dated from the victory of William Pitt, the
Younger, over Charles James Fox in the 1780s and that had only
temporarily been interrupted in 1806–07. Moreover, the new government,
aristocratic or not, was the parent of most of the Whig-Liberal
administrations of the next 35 years.

The year 1830 was also one of economic and social grievances, with
religious issues still being thrown into the melee. In the Midlands and
in northern towns and cities, well-organized political reform movements
were winning widespread support. Corn Laws and Poor Laws, as well as
currency and game laws, were all being attacked, while in the industrial
north the demand was growing for new laws to protect factory labour. It
was in such an atmosphere that the new Whig-led government prepared its
promised reform bill.

Early and mid-Victorian Britain

State and societyThe implementation of the liberal, regulative state emerging after the
Napoleonic Wars involved a number of new departures. The first of these
concerned the new machinery of government, which, instead of relying on
patronage and custom, involved an institutionalized bureaucracy. This
was evident in the development of the factory inspectorate, established
by the 1833 Factory Act, though the characteristic way in which the
state institutionalized itself was by means of local bodies
administering such areas as the fast-developing realm of “public health”
and the Poor Law. In fact, towns and cities themselves became very
important new locations for the expression of the power of the
decentralized state. After the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act, local
government, if developing unevenly, was a major part of the new
machinery of government. There was a great flowering of civic
administration and civic pride during the early and mid-Victorian period
in Britain. This was particularly reflected in the architecture and
infrastructure of British cities—one of the most notable legacies of the
period. Magnificent town halls, libraries, concert halls, museums, and,
not least, the great civil engineering projects of the time all
inculcated the virtues of civic identity and therefore of instituting
civic power.

Beyond the machinery of government, the Poor Law of 1834 represented
the clearest example of the new ideological departures that
characterized the liberal state. Its encouragement of self-supporting
actors within the greater scheme of a natural order expressed the
mixture of utilitarianism and evangelicalism that was characteristic of
the new order. New areas of state action were also evident in education
as well as in factory reform, and with these departures a new kind of
bureaucratic expertise arose. Expert bureaucrats from outside of
government, including the physician and medical reformer James
Kay-Shuttleworth in education and the lawyer Edwin Chadwick in Poor Law
and health reform, were brought in to advise the government. Figures
such as these indicate the permeability of the Victorian state and its
closeness to civil society, for they established their reputations and
gained their expertise outside the attenuated structure of the state
bureaucracy. From the 1850s onward, however, centralized bureaucracy
accrued to itself increasing powers. The reforms of 1853–54 engineered
by Charles Edward Trevelyan and Sir Stafford Northcote instituted, by
means of public and competitive examination, a system based not on
patronage but on merit. In fact, public examination was designed to
create meritocracy of a very particular sort, one based on the
classically educated Englishman of Oxford and Cambridge universities.
For the first time in British history and the history of Oxbridge (the
two universities viewed as an institution), though in both cases
decidedly not the last time, the ideology of merit was employed to
reproduce a particular kind of ruling elite. This elite was built upon
the idea of public duty, inculcated by an Oxbridge education, but above
all it was based upon the notion that the state and its bureaucracy
could be neutral. This neutrality was to stem from the open, competitive
examination itself but also from the idea of that the neutrality of the
civil service could be guaranteed by the ethics of the Oxbridge-educated
English gentleman.

Nonetheless, gentleman of an even higher social station than that of
these new civil servants—that is, the aristocracy and gentry—were still
very much a part of government, and, despite all these reforms, the role
of patronage remained important. The mid-Victorian implementation of the
liberal state by the government of William Gladstone therefore still had
considerable work to do. Gladstone, Whig and later Liberal prime
minister, was the major single influence on the 19th-century liberal
state and arguably the most gifted British politician of his time. The
liberal state’s attempt to rule through freedom and through the natural
order was implemented not merely in social but also in economic terms:
Gladstonian finance, particularly the taxation system, was aimed at
encouraging the belief that all groups in society had a responsibility
for sanctioning and financing government activity and that therefore
they should have an incentive to keep it under control. Economic and
social government came together dramatically in the case of the Irish
Potato Famine in the late 1840s. The outcome of the famine, a disaster
for Ireland involving the death or emigration of millions of people, has
to be seen in the context of the long-term agenda of the liberal state,
which included Ireland as a sort of laboratory for experimentation in
this new kind of government (India was a similar kind of laboratory).
The experimental methods in the Irish case involved an agenda including
population control, the Poor Law relief system, and the consolidation of
property through a variety of means, including emigration, the
elimination of smallholdings, and the sale of large but bankrupt
estates. The government measured the success of its relief policies in
terms of this agenda rather than its effectiveness in addressing the
immediate question of need. The goal of this agenda was the creation of
a society of “rational” small-farm production on the model of the
natural order of the free market, rather than the “irrational”
production of a mass of small peasant proprietors.

However, subsequent implementation of the liberal state—for instance,
that of Gladstone—should not be seen simply as guided by the amoral
market. In the third quarter of the century, Gladstone’s version of the
liberal state represented the apotheosis of the approach to government
favoured by the reformer Sir Robert Peel (the Conservative prime
minister from 1834 to 1835 and again from 1841 to 1846). This version of
the liberal state took the form of an individualism ostensibly based not
upon greed and self-interest but upon probity, self-control, and a sense
of duty and Christian morality. In this regard, as indeed much more
widely in British history, this version of individualism accorded with
many of the beliefs of society in general—not least those held by the
working classes—so that the attempt to rule through the moral
characteristics of society proved in many respects to be an
extraordinarily successful venture in government. Rather like the
thinking behind the reformed civil service, the moral rule at the heart
of Gladstonian economic reform was designed to establish the neutrality,
and therefore the high moral ground, of government: if government were
independent of a self-regulating economy, it would also be free from the
influence of powerful economic interests. This view of liberal
government in the period of Tory power instituted after 1874 changed
little and went unchallenged until the late 19th century, even if Tory
administrations had a somewhat more positive idea of the state.

The political situation

Whig reformsWhig interest in parliamentary reform went back to the 18th century, and
Grey himself provided a link between two separate periods of public
agitation. Yet, in the country as a whole, there were at least three
approaches to the reform question. Middle-class reformers were anxious
to secure representation for commercial and industrial interests and for
towns and cities such as Birmingham and Manchester that had no direct
voice in Parliament. “Popular radicals,” of both middle-class and
working-class origin, were concerned with asserting rights as well as
with relieving distress. “Philosophic radicals,” the followers of the
utilitarianism of philosopher Jeremy Bentham, were strong ideological
protagonists of parliamentary reform but were deeply hostile to both the
arguments and the tactics of the popular radicals, except when confident
that they were in a position to deploy or control them. Agitation in the
country kept the reform question on the boil between 1830 and 1832,
while an aloof Grey faced unprecedented constitutional difficulties with
both the king and Parliament.

The Reform Act of 1832 (see Reform Bill) was in no sense a democratic
measure. It defined more clearly than ever before the distinction
between those who were and those who were not sanctioned to wield power,
and it did so entirely in terms of property ownership, entrenching the
power of landed wealth as well as acknowledging new sources of power in
the middle classes and the consequent claims upon the rights and virtues
of their new political identity. The bill entailed a substantial
redistribution of parliamentary constituencies and a change in the
franchise. The total electorate was increased by 57 percent to 217,000,
but artisans, labourers, and large sections of the lower middle classes
still remained disenfranchised. No radical demands were met, even though
the manner of passing the bill had demonstrated the force of organized
opinion in the country, particularly in the large cities, which were
also now given representation.

Returned with a huge majority in the general election of December
1832, the Whigs carried out a number of other important reforms. A
statute in 1833 ended slavery in the British colonies; in that same year
the East India Company lost its monopoly of the China trade and became a
purely governing body with no commercial functions.

The new Poor Law of 1834 turned out to be an unpopular measure in
many parts of the country, however, and led to violent outbreaks of
disorder. Its basic principle—that “outdoor poor relief” (i.e., outside
the workhouse) should cease and that conditions in workhouses should be
“less eligible” (i.e., less inviting) than the worst conditions in the
labour market outside—was as bitterly attacked by writers such as Thomas
Carlyle as it was by the workingmen themselves.

All of these contentious issues multiplied after 1836, when a
financial crisis ushered in a period of economic depression accompanied
by a series of bad harvests. Social conflict, never far from the
surface, became more open and dramatic. Grey’s successor, William Lamb,
Viscount Melbourne, proved incapable of finding effective answers to any
of the pressing financial, economic, and social questions of the day,
but he did prove adept in his dealings with Queen Victoria, who ascended
the throne in 1837.

Chartism and the Anti-Corn Law League As the economic skies darkened after 1836 and prophets such as Carlyle
anticipated cataclysmic upheaval, the two most disgruntled groups in
society were the industrial workers and their employers. Each group
developed new forms of organization, and each turned from local to
national extra-parliamentary action. The two most important
organizations were the Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League. Chartism
drew on a multiplicity of workers’ grievances, extending working-class
consciousness as it grew. The Anti-Corn Law League, founded as a
national organization in Manchester in 1839, was the spearhead of
middle-class energies, and it enjoyed the advantage not only of lavish
funds but also of a single-point program—the repeal of the restrictive
Corn Laws.

Taking its name from the People’s Charter published in London in May
1838, Chartism aimed at parliamentary reform. The charter contained six
points, all of them political and all with a radical pedigree: (1)
annual parliaments, (2) universal male suffrage, (3) the ballot, (4) no
property qualifications for members of Parliament, (5) payment of
members of Parliament, and (6) equal electoral districts. These were old
demands that would have been supported by 18th-century radicals.
Localized Poor Law and factory reform agitations centring on such
grievances were subsumed in Chartism because of its commitment to
national political action. However, for a variety of reasons—not least
that the politicians had been able again to convey the sense that the
state was benign and neutral and not, as Chartists perceived it,
repressive and sectional—the mass movement of Chartism ultimately
failed.

By contrast, the Anti-Corn Law League, led by Richard Cobden and John
Bright, met with success. It employed every device of propaganda,
including the use of new media of communication, such as the Penny Post,
which was introduced in 1840. The formula of the league was a simple one
designed to secure working-class as well as middle-class support. Repeal
of the Corn Laws, it was argued, would settle the two great issues that
faced Britain in the “hungry forties”—securing the prosperity of
industry and guaranteeing the livelihood of the poor. So enormous was
religion’s influence on the league that when it identified the landlord
as the only barrier to salvation, it meant religious as well economic
salvation. Most Chartists were unconvinced by this logic, but, in a
landed Parliament, Peel carried the measure against his own party.

Peel and the Peelite heritagePeel was the presiding genius of a powerful administration, strictly
supervising the business of each separate branch of government;
nevertheless, a substantial section of the squirearchy rebelled, roused
by the brilliant speeches of a young politician, Benjamin Disraeli, who
in his writings had already approached the “condition of England
question” in a totally different style than that of Peel. The results of
repeal were important politically as well as economically. As a result
of the split, party boundaries remained blurred until 1859, with the
“Peelites” retaining a sense of identity even after Peel’s premature
death following a riding accident in 1850. Some of them, particularly
Gladstone, eventually became leaders of the late 19th-century Liberal
Party, which emerged from the mid-century confusion. The protectionists,
most of whom abandoned protection after 1852, formed the nucleus (around
Edward Stanley, earl of Derby, and Disraeli) of the later Conservative
Party, but they were unable to secure a majority in any election until
1874. The minority governments they formed in 1852, 1858, and 1866
lacked any secure sense of authority. The Whigs, themselves divided into
factions, returned to office in 1847 and held it for most of the
mid-century years, but they were often dependent on support from radical
and Irish colleagues. There was no time between 1846 and 1866, however,
when extra-parliamentary agitation assumed the dimensions it had between
1838 and 1846.

Matters of religion helped divide the limited mid-Victorian
electorate, with the Nonconformists (Dissenters) encouraging, from their
local bases, the development of liberalism and with the Anglican
churchmen often—but by no means universally—supporting the Conservative
Party. Nonelectors’ associations (representing the disenfranchised)
tried with varying degrees of success to keep radical issues alive, but
party divisions remained based on customary allegiance as much as on
careful scrutiny of issues, and there was still considerable scope for
bribery at election times. The civil service might be pure, but the
electors often were not. The Corrupt Practices Act of 1854 provided a
more exact definition of bribery than there had been before, but it was
not until a further act of 1883 that election expenses were rigorously
controlled. It was then that, quite emphatically, parliamentary
representation became not a matter of communities but of individuals, a
process taken a considerable step further in 1872 with institution of
electoral secrecy by the Ballot Act.

The prestige of the individual members of Parliament was high, and
the fragmentation of parties after 1846 allowed them considerable
independence. Groups of members supporting particular economic
interests, especially the railways, could often determine parliamentary
strategies. Nevertheless, contemporaries feared such interests less than
they feared what was often called the most dangerous of all interests,
executive government. Powerful government and large-scale “organic”
reform were considered dangerous, and even those radicals who supported
organic reform, like Cobden and Bright, were suspicious of powerful
government.

Palmerston Lord Palmerston, who became prime minister for the first time in 1855,
stood out as the dominant political personality of mid-Victorian Britain
precisely because he was opposed to dramatic change and because he knew
through long experience how to maneuver politics within the
half-reformed constitution. In a period when it was difficult to collect
parliamentary majorities, he often forced decisions, as in the general
election of 1857, on the simple question “Are you for or against me?” He
also was skillful in using the growing power of the press to reinforce
his influence. At a time of party confusion, when the queen might well
have played a key part in politics, Palmerston found the answer to royal
opposition in popular prestige, carefully stage-managed. His chief
preoccupation was with foreign affairs, and his approach was, on several
occasions, diametrically opposed to that of the court.

There was no contradiction between his views on domestic and foreign
policy. He preferred the British system of constitutional government,
resting on secure social foundations, to Continental absolutism, but,
like Canning, his predecessor as foreign secretary, Palmerston was
anxious above all else to advance the interests of Britain as he saw
them. The supremacy of British sea power, British economic ascendancy,
and political divisions inside each of the main countries of Europe
before and after the Revolutions of 1848 gave him his opportunity.

His interventions were not confined to Europe. In 1840–41 he had
forced the Chinese ports open to foreign trade, and, by the Treaty of
Nanjing (1842), he had acquired Hong Kong for Britain. In 1857 he went
to war in China again and, when defeated in Parliament, appealed
triumphantly to the country. He also intervened in Russia. The Crimean
War (1853–56) was designed to curb what were interpreted as Russian
designs on the Ottoman Empire and a Russian threat to British power in
the eastern Mediterranean. The outcome greatly favoured the British and
their main allies, the French and the Ottoman Empire. Although
Palmerston’s government was defeated in 1858, he was back again as prime
minister, for the last time, a year later.

During Palmerston’s remarkable ministry of 1859–65, which included
Peel’s successor as prime minister, Lord John Russell, as foreign
secretary and the Peelite Gladstone as chancellor of the Exchequer, it
was impossible for Britain to dominate the international scene as
effectively as in previous periods of Palmerstonian power. With
efficient military power at his disposal, the Prussian prime minister,
Otto von Bismarck, proved more than a match for Palmerston. The union of
modern Italy, which Palmerston supported, the American Civil War, in
which his sympathies were with the Confederacy, and the rise of
Bismarck’s Germany, which he did not understand, were developments that
reshaped the world in which he had been able to achieve so much by
forceful opportunism. When Palmerston died, in October 1865, it was
clear that in foreign relations as well as in home politics there would
have to be what Gladstone described as “a new commencement.”

Gladstone and Disraeli In the large urban constituencies the demand for a new and active
liberalism had already been gaining ground, and at Westminster itself
Gladstone was beginning to identify himself not only with the continued
advance of free trade but also with the demand for parliamentary reform.
In 1864 he forecast new directions in politics when he stated that the
burden of proof concerning the case for reform rested not with the
reformers but with their opponents. A year later he lost his seat
representing the University of Oxford and was returned as member of
Parliament for a populous Lancashire constituency. The timing was right,
because, after the death of Palmerston, the question of parliamentary
reform was reopened and the Second Reform Bill was passed in 1867.

The reform of 1867 almost doubled the electorate, adding 938,000 new
names to the register and extending the franchise to many workingmen in
the towns and cities. The county franchise was not substantially
changed, but 45 new seats were created by taking one seat from existing
borough constituencies with a population of fewer than 10,000. Disraeli
hoped that, in return for his support in passing this measure, urban
workers would vote for him. He believed rightly that many of them were
Conservatives already by instinct and allegiance, but in 1868, in the
first general election under the new system, it was Gladstone who was
returned as prime minister.

In both parties, new forces were stirring at the local level, and
energetic efforts were under way to organize the electorate and the
political parties along new lines. Even though Gladstone resumed power,
it became apparent that the popular vote was not Liberal by divine
right. In several parts of England, particularly in the industrial
north, there developed a strong popular Toryism, which in Lancashire, a
great centre of the cotton industry, was based partly upon deference to
industrial employers, partly upon dislike of Irish immigrants, partly
upon popular Protestant associations with Englishness, and not least
upon what to many was a surprisingly strong support for the principles
of church and state.

With the development of central party machinery and local
organization, the role of the crown was reduced during this period to
that of merely ratifying the result of elections. Although the queen
greatly preferred Disraeli to Gladstone, she could not keep Gladstone
out. Her obvious partisanship made some of her acts look
unconstitutional, but they would not have been deemed unconstitutional
in any previous period of history. The public during this period was
more interested in the political leaders than in the queen, who lived in
retirement and was sharply criticized in sections of the press.

Gladstone’s first administration had several notable achievements:
the disestablishment and partial disendowment of the Irish church,
accomplished in 1869 in face of the opposition of the House of Lords;
the Irish Land Act of 1870, providing some safeguards to Irish tenant
farmers; William Edward Forster’s Education Act of the same year, the
first national act dealing with primary education; the Trade-Union Act
of 1871, legalizing unions and giving them the protection of the courts;
and the Ballot Act of 1872, introducing secret voting. Moreover, the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were opened to Nonconformists, or
Dissenters (Protestants who did not conform to the practices of the
Church of England), while between 1868 and 1873 the cumbrous military
machine was renovated by Gladstone’s secretary for war, Edward Cardwell.
The system of dual responsibility of commander in chief and secretary
for war also was abolished, and the subordination of the former to the
latter was asserted. In 1873 the Judicature Act, amended in 1876,
simplified the tangle of legal institutions and procedures. Gladstone,
throughout his life, preferred cheap and free government to expensive
and socially committed government. He was anxious indeed in 1873 to
abolish income tax, on which the public finances of the future were to
depend.

Many of these reforms did not satisfy affected interests. The Irish
Church Disestablishment Act failed to placate the Irish and alarmed many
English churchmen, while the Education Act was passed only in the face
of bitter opposition from Nonconformists, who objected that Forster’s
system did not break the power of the church over primary education.
Although the act was extended in 1880 when primary education was made
compulsory and in 1891 when it became free, there were often noisy
struggles between churchmen and Nonconformists on the new school boards
set up locally under Forster’s act. If the Education Act alienated many
Nonconformists, the Licensing Bills of 1871 and 1872 alienated their
enemies, the brewers. In the general election of 1874, therefore, months
after Disraeli had described the Liberal leaders in one of his many
memorable phrases as a “range of exhausted volcanoes,” the brewers threw
all their influence behind the Conservatives. “We have been borne down
in a torrent of gin and beer,” Gladstone complained.

In his subsequent ministry, with the assistance of men like Richard
Cross, the home secretary, Disraeli justified at last his reputation as
a social reformer. By the Employers and Workmen Act of 1875, “masters”
and “men” were put on an equal footing regarding breaches of contract,
while by the Trade-Union Act of 1875, which went much further than the
Liberal Act of 1871, trade unionists were allowed to engage in peaceful
picketing and to do whatever would not be criminal if done by an
individual. The Public Health Act of 1875 created a public health
authority in every area; the Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings
Improvement Act of the same year enabled local authorities to embark
upon schemes of slum clearance; a factory act of 1878 fixed a 56-hour
workweek; while further legislation dealt with friendly societies
(private societies for mutual-health and old-age insurance), the
protection of seamen, land improvements carried out by tenants, and the
adulteration of food. There was no similar burst of social legislation
until after 1906.

If there were significant, though not fully acknowledged, differences
between the records of the two governments on domestic issues, there
were open, even strident differences on questions of foreign policy.
Gladstone had never been a Palmerstonian. He was always anxious to avoid
the resort to force, and he put his trust not in national prejudices but
in an enlightened public opinion in Europe as well as in Britain. His
object was justice rather than power. In practice, however, he often
gave the impression of a man who vacillated and could not act firmly.
Disraeli, on the other hand, was willing to take risks to enhance
British prestige and to seek to profit from, rather than to moralize
about, foreign dissensions. His first ventures in “imperialism”—a speech
at the Crystal Palace in 1872, the purchase of the Suez Canal shares in
1875, and the proclamation of the queen as “Empress of India”—showed
that he had abandoned the view, popular during the middle years of the
century, that colonies were millstones around the mother country’s neck.
But these moves did not involve him in any European entanglements, nor
did the costly, if brilliantly led, campaigns of Maj. Gen. Frederick
Roberts in Afghanistan (1878–80) and the annexation of the Transvaal in
South Africa in 1877.

It was the Middle Eastern crisis of 1875–78 that produced the
liveliest 19th-century debate on foreign policy issues. In May 1876
Disraeli rejected overtures made by Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany
to deal jointly with the Ottoman Empire, which was faced with revolt in
Serbia. His pro-Turkish sympathies irritated many Liberals, and, after
Turkey had gone on to suppress with great violence a revolt in Bulgaria
in 1876, the Liberal conscience was stirred, and mass meetings were held
in many parts of the country. Gladstone, who had gone into retirement as
Liberal leader in 1875, was slower to respond to the issue than many of
his followers, but, once roused, he emerged from retirement, wrote an
immensely influential pamphlet on the atrocities, and led a public
campaign on the platform and in the press. For him the Turks were
“inhuman and despotic,” and, whatever the national interests involved,
Britain, in his view, should do nothing to support them. Disraeli’s
calculations concerned strategic and imperial necessities rather than
ideals of conduct, and his suspicions were justified when the Russians
attacked Turkey in April 1877. Opinion swung back to his side, and in
1878 Disraeli sent a British fleet to the Dardanelles. London was seized
by war fever—the term jingoism was coined to describe it—which
intensified when news arrived that a peace agreement, the Treaty of San
Stefano, had been signed whereby Turkey accepted maximum Russian
demands. Reservists were mobilized in Britain, and Indian troops were
sent to the Mediterranean. Disraeli’s foreign minister, who disapproved
of such action, resigned, to be succeeded by Robert Gascoyne-Cecil,
marquess of Salisbury, who was eventually to serve as prime minister in
the last Conservative administrations of the 19th century. The immediate
crisis passed, and, at the Congress of Berlin, an international
conference held in June and July 1878, which Disraeli attended, the
inroads into Turkish territory were reduced, Russia was kept well away
from Constantinople, and Britain acquired Cyprus. Disraeli brought back
“peace with honour.” But the swings of public opinion continued, and in
1879 Gladstone, starting at Midlothian in Scotland, fought a nationwide
political campaign of unprecedented excitement and drama. In the general
election of April 1880, the Liberals returned to power triumphantly,
with a majority of 137 over the Conservatives. Disraeli, who had moved
to the House of Lords in 1876, died in 1881.

Economy and societyAlthough the Industrial Revolution traditionally has dominated accounts
of change over the course of this period, recent research has emphasized
the uneven and complex nature of this change. Nevertheless, over the
course of the 19th century, the rise of manufacturing industry was
striking, with the decisive shift occurring in the first three decades
of the century. In 1801, 22 percent of the active British workforce was
employed in manufacturing, mining, and construction, while 36 percent
was involved in agriculture; by 1851, manufacturing, mining, and
construction had increased to 40 percent, while agriculture had dropped
to 21 percent. By 1901, agriculture had fallen even farther, to only 9
percent.

Cotton textiles remained the dominant new industry, centred in
Manchester, with the textile factory being thought of by one of its
contemporary admirers, the Leeds manufacturer Edward Baines, as “the
most striking example of the dominion obtained by human science over the
powers of nature of which modern times can boast.” By 1851 there were
some 1,800 cotton factories in Britain. From 1815 to 1851 raw cotton
imports had increased unevenly from 101 million pounds to 757 million
pounds, while exports of manufactured cotton piece goods increased from
253 million yards to 1.543 billion yards. Manchester was the centre of
the cotton industry. During the same period, however, similar
steam-driven technology accounted for the expansion of the woolen
textiles industry, with Australia, which had provided no raw wool for
Britain in 1815, supplying about 30 million pounds in 1851. Bradford and
Leeds were the centres of the woolen textile industry. It was the
textiles industry more than any other that illustrated Britain’s
dependence on international trade, a trade that it commanded not only
through the volume of its imports and of its manufacturing output but
also through the strength of its banking and other financial
institutions, as well as the extent of its shipping industry.

The second, capital goods, phase of industrialization, beginning in
the mid-19th century, broadened the manufacturing base into areas such
as shipping and engineering. In tandem with this advance was the growth
of the service industry as the economy expanded over time. The advent of
mass consumption in the second half of the 19th-century—resulting in the
slow development of mass retailing by multiple stores—was one
consequence of this. While the factory and mechanized production played
important roles in the process of industrialization, this process has
been usefully described as “combined and uneven development.”
Undoubtedly, hand technology and muscle power continued to play a
considerable role far beyond the mid-19th century, and, as older forms
of production continued alongside new, they were incorporated in, and to
some extent regenerated by, factory production. The artisan sector, the
conduct of work in people’s homes, and subcontracting all remained
central to many industries—for example, the hosiery industry in
Nottingham.

Much production was in fact small-scale and characterized to varying
degrees by employers’ dependence on the skills and authority of the
worker; if in some areas—for example, the trades in London—capitalism
made progress by degrading the status of craft workers, in other areas
workers were able to hold their own and adapt to new situations by
organizing through the trade unions that gave them leverage over
employers. Even in mechanized industries, managerial hierarchies were
weakly elaborated, and there was a considerable dependence on worker
skill and authority as well as a limited penetration of technology. Also
of great importance were domestic service and small shop keeping. The
upshot was not a linear process of change in which the end result was
de-skilled factory production and the homogenization of the condition of
workers but rather a complex set of outcomes in which the relations of
capital and labour represented a variegated division of power.

In fact the decentralized nature of industrial production paralleled
the decentralized state, and workers’ understanding of the economy was
in many ways similar to their view of the state—namely, one of guarded
acceptance. As it did with all other sectors of British life, the state
for the most part studiously stayed outside the field of industrial
relations; nonetheless, developments in the economy and in labour
relations had a decisive role in shaping British workers’ views of the
state. Within labour itself, there were divisions between “honourable”
(traditional, apprenticeship-based, well-paid) and “dishonourable”
(low-status, corner-cutting) trades, between those with a trade and
those without, between the skilled and the unskilled, between union and
nonunion workers, and between men and women. The labour movement itself
reflected these divisions, as the increasingly strong trade union
movement of this period was in fact largely shaped to meet the interests
and demands of the skilled male head of household.

People were concerned too about the rising population as well as the
nature and pace of economic change. In the first census of 1801, the
population of England and Wales was about 9 million and that of Scotland
about 1.5 million. By 1851 the comparable figures were 18 million and 3
million. At its peak in the decade between 1811 and 1821, the growth
rate for Britain as a whole was 17 percent. It took time to realize that
Thomas Malthus’s eloquently expressed fears that population would outrun
subsistence were exaggerated and that, as population grew, national
production would also grow. Indeed, national income at constant prices
increased nearly threefold between 1801 and 1851, substantially more
than the increase in population.

The new technology reached its peak in the age of the railway and the
steamship. Coal production, about 13 million tons in 1815, increased
five times during the next 50 years, and by 1850 Britain was producing
more than 2 million tons of pig iron, half the world’s output. Both coal
and iron exports increased dramatically, with coal exports amounting to
3.3 million tons in 1851, as opposed to less than 250,000 tons at the
end of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Coal mining was
scattered in the coal-producing districts; there were few large towns,
and miners lived a distinctive life, having their own patterns of work
and leisure. Iron production was associated with larger plants and
considerable urbanization. In South Wales, for example, one of the areas
of industrial expansion, the Dowlais works employed 6,000 people and
turned out 20,000 tons of pig iron each year during the 1840s.
Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city, was the centre of a broad
range of metallurgical industries that were organized mainly in small
workshops that differed sharply in character from the huge textile mills
of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Industrialization preceded the coming of the railway, but the
railroad did much to lower transport costs, to consume raw materials, to
stimulate investment through an extended capital market, and to
influence the location of industry. The railway age may be said to have
begun in 1830, when the line from Manchester to Liverpool, the country’s
most vigorously expanding port, was opened, and to have gone through its
most hectic phases during the 1840s, when contemporaries talked of a
“railway mania.” By 1851, 6,800 miles (11,000 km) of railway were open,
some of which involved engineering feats of great complexity. There was
as much argument among contemporaries about the impact of railways as
there was about the impact of steam engines in factories, but there was
general agreement about the fact that the coming of the railway marked a
great divide in British social history. It was not until the 1870s and
’80s that steamship production came to its full realization, and by then
British engineers and workers had been responsible for building railways
in all parts of the world. By 1890 Britain had more registered shipping
tonnage than the rest of the world put together.

Cultural change

The development of private lifeIt was in this period that private life achieved a new prominence in
British society. The very term “Victorianism,” perhaps the only “ism” in
history attached to the name of a sovereign, not only became synonymous
with a cluster of restraining moral attributes—character, duty, will,
earnestness, hard work, respectable comportment and behaviour, and
thrift—but also came to be strongly associated with a new version of
private life. Victoria herself symbolized much of these new patterns of
life, particularly through her married life with her husband, Albert,
and—much later in her reign—through the early emergence of the
phenomenon of the “royal family.” That private, conjugal life was played
out on the public stage of the monarchy was only one of the
contradictions marking the new privacy.

However, privacy was more apparent for the better-off in society than
for the poor. Restrictions on privacy among the latter were apparent in
what were by modern standards large households, in which space was often
shared with those outside the immediate, conjugal family of the head of
household, including relatives, servants, and lodgers. Privacy was also
restricted by the small size of dwellings; for example, in Scotland in
1861, 26 percent of the population lived in single-room dwellings, 39
percent in two-room dwellings, and 57 percent lived more than two to a
room. It was not until the 20th century that this situation changed
dramatically. Nonetheless, differences within Britain were important,
and flat living in a Glasgow tenement was very different from residence
in a self-contained house characteristic of large parts of the north of
England. This British kind of residential pattern as a whole was itself
very different from continental Europe, and despite other differences
between the classes, there were similarities among the British in terms
of the house as the cradle of modern privacy. The suggestive term
“social privacy” has been coined to describe the experience of domestic
space prior to the intervention of the municipality and the state in the
provision of housing, which occurred with increasing effect after
mid-century. The older cellular structure of housing, evident in the
tangle of courts and alleys in the old city centres, often with cellar
habitations as well, resulted in the distinction between public and
private taking extremely ambiguous form. In the municipal housing that
was increasingly widespread after mid-century, this gave way to a more
open layout in which single elements were connected to each other.

Among housing reformers there was a dislike of dead ends, courts, and
the old situation where habitations were turned in upon themselves in
their own social privacy. In the new order, space became neutral and
connective, and, in the new “bylaw housing,” streets were regular in
layout and width, with side streets at right angles and back alleys in
parallel lines. The streets outside were (and remain) surprisingly wide
in contrast to the narrow alleys behind. Such streets allowed a maximum
of free passage. The street outside was public and communal. The alley
or lane behind was less socially neutral than the street, still rather
secret. It was not a traffic thoroughfare for the public at large, being
reserved for the immediate inhabitants, for the hanging of washing, and
perhaps for the playing of football (soccer). In between these public
and semipublic spheres and the house within was the space of the yard at
the back, which in contradistinction to the street was private and
individual (if less so, potentially, than the house itself). In this
fashion, municipal authorities sought to inculcate privacy in the lower
classes. However, conditions worked against domestic privacy for them,
and it was in the homes of the better-off that privacy was most
developed.

Within the dwellings of the more privileged, there was a trend
towards the specialization of rooms, the separation of the public from
the private sides of life, and the development of distinct spheres for
women and children. A society based on achieved status, as British
society was slowly becoming, was very concerned to regulate and
legitimize social relationships of gender and status, and the spaces of
the home served as a means of doing this. From about the 1820s a family
pattern developed that was conditioned by spatial environments that
resulted from the new significance of home and domesticity. The home was
to be a retreat from the stress of the world and a haven of security.
This change in perspective was associated with other developments,
namely the retreat from the centre of cities to the suburbs—evident in
Manchester, for example, as early as the 1820s—along with a concomitant
switch in housing style from the 18th-century terrace (row houses) to
the detached or semidetached villa. In the move from the terrace, what
was once the common garden of the square gave way to a separate, private
garden. The common and more public rooms of the house, which were once
for use by all members of the family, were relocated on the ground
floor, with the other stories of the house being limited to the use of
family members in a distinct domestic sphere. In terms of the
development of working-class domesticity, by mid-century there was a
clear gender division of labour between men and women (though it was
often contradicted in practice by economic necessity and local
employment conditions), based on the assumption that a man was to be the
main and preferably sole breadwinner and head of the household. This
pattern of gender relationships had profound influence on working-class
institutions, not only on the trade union movement but also on the club
and association life that was so central to the leisure activity of the
less well-off.

However, the Victorian middle-class family should not be confused
with the small nuclear family of the 20th century. Families were large
and intermarried so that the boundaries between the categories of
relative, dependent, and friend were indistinct, recalling an older
notion of family as the circle of dependents. The relationship between
public and private was therefore similarly complicated. Because the
domestic interior could be the site of all sorts of familial and
extra-familial interactions and obligations, the nexus of private life
might also be distinctly public. Of course, privacy was accelerated by
means other than family and domestic arrangements. The spread of reading
on one’s own and of letter writing, the latter of which increased
massively with the development of the cheap Penny Post, were both
conducive to privacy.

Moreover, privacy in life led to privacy in death, as what may be
called social burial in the old churchyard gave way to the new privacy
of the cemetery. An invention of this time (Kensal Green, the first
specialist London cemetery, opened in 1831), the cemetery was a new sort
of public space, which in theory welcomed all comers, though in practice
it was open only to the better-off, at least at first. Communal,
spatially particular parish rights of burial were replaced by absolute,
abstract property rights, and the hugger-mugger of the old churchyard
was replaced by the possibility of the individuation of the dead person,
by means of the memorial and the deployment of the clearly demarcated
burial site. One could really have eternal rest, instead of being dug up
every few decades. The individual had his or her space in death as in
life.

ReligionVictorian doubt about inherited biblical religion was as much an
acknowledged theme of the period as was Victorian belief. Discoveries in
geology and biology continued to challenge all accepted views of
religious chronology handed down from the past. Perhaps the most
profound challenge to religion came with Charles Darwin’s On the Origin
of Species (1859). Yet the challenge was neither unprecedented nor
unique. In 1860 Essays and Reviews was published; a lively appraisal of
fundamental religious questions by a number of liberal-minded religious
thinkers, it provoked the sharpest religious controversy of the century.

Behind such controversies there were many signs of a confident belief
on all sides that inquiry itself, if freely and honestly pursued, would
do nothing to dissolve shared ideals of conduct. Even writers who were
“agnostic” talked of the “religion of humanity” or tried to be good “for
good’s sake, not God’s.” Standards were felt to count in institutional
as well as in private life.

Emphasis on conduct was, of course, related to religion. The British
religious spectrum was of many colours. The Church of England was
flanked on one side by Rome and on the other by religious dissent. Both
were active forces to be reckoned with. The Roman Catholic Church was
growing in importance not only in the Irish sections of the industrial
cities but also among university students and teachers. Dissent had a
grip on the whole culture of large sections of the middle classes,
dismissed abruptly by Matthew Arnold as classes of “mutilated and
incomplete men.” Sometimes the local battle between the Church of
England and dissent was bitterly contested, with Nonconformists opposing
church rates (taxes), challenging closed foundations, and preaching
educational reform and total abstinence from intoxicating beverages. A
whole network of local voluntary bodies, led either by Anglicans or
Nonconformists, usually in rivalry, came into existence, representing a
tribute to the energies of the age and to its fear of state
intervention.

The Church of England itself was a divided family, with different
groups contending for positions of influence. The High Church movement
(which emphasized the “Catholic” side of Anglicanism) was given a
distinctive character, first by the Oxford movement, or Tractarianism,
which had grown up in the 1830s as a reaction against the new liberal
theology, and then by the often provocative and always controversial
ritualist agitation of the 1850s and ’60s. The fact that prominent
members of the Church of England flirted with “Romanism” and even
crossed the Rubicon often raised the popular Protestant cry of “church
in danger.” Peel’s conversion to free trade in 1846 scarcely created any
more excitement than John Henry Newman’s conversion to Roman Catholicism
the previous year, while in 1850 Lord Russell, the prime minister, tried
to capitalize politically on violent antipapal feelings stimulated by
the pope’s decision to create Roman Catholic dioceses in England.

The Evangelicals, in many ways the most influential as well as the
most distinctively English religious group, were suspicious both of
ritual and of appeals to any authority other than the Bible. Their
concern with individual conduct was a force for social conformity during
the middle years of the century rather than for that depth of individual
religious experience that the first advocates of “vital religion” had
preached in the 18th century. Yet leaders such as Lord Ashley were
prepared to probe some Evangelical social issues (e.g., housing) and to
stir men’s consciences, and, even if their preoccupation was with saving
souls, their missionary zeal influenced developments overseas as well as
domestic legislation. There were other members of the church who urged
the cause of Christian socialism. Their intellectual guide was the
outstanding Anglican theologian Frederick Denison Maurice. The
Evangelicals in particular were drawn into substantial missionary
activity in the empire and other parts of the world, frequently clashing
with settlers and administrators and sometimes with soldiers. They
regarded it as their sacred duty to spread the gospel from, in the words
of one of the period’s best-known missionary hymns, “Greenland’s icy
mountains” to “India’s coral strand.”

Beyond the influence of both church and chapel, there were thousands
of people in mid-Victorian England who were ignorant of, or indifferent
toward, the message of Christianity, a fact demonstrated by England’s
one religious census in 1851. Although movements such as the Salvation
Army, founded by William Booth in 1865, attempted to rally the poor of
the great cities, there were many signs of apathy or even hostility.
There was also a small but active secularist agitation; particularly in
London, forces making for what came to be described as “secularism”
(more goods, more leisure, more travel) could undermine spiritual
concerns. The great religious controversies of mid-Victorian England
were not so much to be settled as to be shelved.

In Scotland, where the Church of Scotland had been fashioned by the
people against the crown, there was a revival of Presbyterianism in the
1820s and ’30s. A complex and protracted controversy, centring on the
right of congregations to exclude candidates for the ministry whom they
thought unsuitable, ended in schism. In 1843, 474 ministers left the
Church of Scotland and established the Free Church of Scotland. Within
four years they had raised more than £1.25 million and built 654
churches. This was a remarkable effort, even in a great age of church
and chapel building. It left Scotland with a religious pattern even more
different from that of England than it had been in 1815. Yet many of the
most influential voices in mid-Victorian Britain, including Carlyle and
Samuel Smiles (Self-Help; 1859), were Scottish, and the conception of
the gospel of work, in particular, owed much in content and tone, even
if often indirectly, to Scottish Calvinism. In Wales there was a
particularly vigorous upsurge of Nonconformity, and the Welsh chapel was
to influence late 19th-century and 20th-century British politics.

Leisure Leisure emerged as a distinct concept and activity, at least on a mass
scale, only when the hours of labour diminished and became more regular.
Before then, work and nonwork activities had been closely related to
each other—for example, in the popular observance of the weekly “Saint
Monday,” when furious bouts of working were followed by equally furious
bouts of enjoyment on a day supposedly given over to work. In the 1850s,
in textiles, the leading sector of the economy, there was a more regular
working day and week, and a half-day of leisure, Saturday, also
eventually emerged. Hours of labour began to approximate nine per day in
the 1870s and eight per day after World War I. The Bank Holiday Act of
1871 further regularized leisure time. Yet, obviously, for the majority
of people, work was the dominant activity.

For the privileged minority, however, leisure defined a good deal of
their existence, the model of aristocratic “society” being redeployed in
the early 19th century. Even in the 18th century the “middling sort”
well-to-do of the towns, the urban gentry, had adopted the assembly room
(where the elite had gathered to dance and socialize), the theatre, and
the promenade as a means of regulating and enjoying urban life. This
growth of a provincial urban culture had a serious side too, in the
literary and philosophical societies of the late 18th century. In the
first three decades of the new century this more serious aspect became
increasingly apparent through the impact of the growth of Evangelical
religion and of political events both at home and in Europe, so that
there was a shift from the older sociability of propertied urban culture
to a new emphasis on the deployment of leisure and culture as means of
negotiating social and political difficulties, especially in the new and
growing towns and cities.

The idea of “recreation” began to emerge; that is, that nonwork time
should be a time of re-creating the body and mind for the chief purpose
of work. The idea grew too that this recreation should be “rational.”
The characteristic institutions of these new initiatives were the
Mechanics Institutes for labourers and the Atheneaums for the
sons—though not the daughters—of the more wealthy. Beyond these
institutions there was the remarkable growth of those concerned with
bringing culture to propertied urbanites, notably art galleries.
However, it was not until mid-century that such initiatives began to
develop rapidly, as in Manchester in the 1850s, where the Halle
Orchestra was established on a professional basis and its concerts
opened to anyone who could pay admission, unlike earlier, purely
subscription-based music organizations. In the same decade, Owens
College, the forerunner of the University of Manchester, was founded.
The development of these institutions marked the emergence a more
self-consciously public middle-class culture, one remodelled around a
more open and inclusive notion of what public life involved.

In terms of popular culture, a more regularized and less demanding
working day and week became part of a new kind of working year, so that
old calendrical observances and rituals were lost. At the same time, a
number were retained, being transformed to serve new purposes in the
changed circumstances of increasing urbanization and industrialization.
For instance, the old, established local “feast” and “wake” days of the
industrial districts in the north of England were retained, serving many
of the old communal functions yet also changing character and obtaining
new functions in light of the spread of the railway and the advent of
the modern vacation. Communal identities might now be formed by leaving
the towns en masse, either for the railway excursion or on holiday, when
large sections of the workers from particular towns took their leisure
together at the new seaside resorts such as Blackpool. In urban Britain,
restrictions upon space as well as upon time shaped the new culture,
with old places of congregation, such as common lands on which fairs had
been held, now being built over as towns grew. In the process, leisure
often moved indoors, becoming more regular and more commercial in its
organization. Commercial pressures in fact were most responsible for
reshaping what had at least from the late 18th century been identified
as popular culture, as opposed to forms of high culture. (Institutions
such as the new urban concert halls of the mid-19th century were
important in fostering a notion of the sublime and sacral nature of
classical music, in contrast to the “low” music of the other sort of
urban concert hall, namely the music hall.)

Commercialization of public culture was evident in the music hall
from the 1850s, though more so in the late 19th century, with the
construction of large purpose-built halls and the development of a
nationwide chain of venues and a national “star” system. Before then,
even if commercial, organizations were smaller-scale, less commercial,
and more locally rooted. Commercial pressures were accompanied by
political and moral pressures from above. The civic provision of culture
was intended not only for the well-to-do but also for the mass of the
population. For example, the public park, from its introduction in the
1840s, was an attempt to reproduce rational recreation among the lower
classes through the design of the park as a place where civilized and
rational behaviour and deportment could be encouraged. Of course, in
practice, parks served other purposes, but their place in what was a
widespread and marked reshaping of popular manners should not be
underestimated. This reshaping owed a great deal to the beneficiaries of
reform themselves, in that some of the most vocal supporters of the
reform of the old order of “superstition and brutality” were radical
workingmen whose conception of reason pitted them against the old
culture. They were joined by Dissenter workingmen who were equally
uncomfortable with traditional culture. Commercial and reform interests
combined in the proliferation of reading matter for the “popular
classes.” Indeed, the creation of a literate population was one of the
most striking achievements of the century, but, while journals and books
advocating self-improvement reached a surprisingly wide audience, this
readership was not as wide as that of the sensational popular literature
of the 1830s and ’40s. About this time a mass popular press also
developed, though at this stage a Sunday press only, in the form of
Lloyd’s News and Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper. The explosion of the
provincial press in the 1850s reached a somewhat different social
constituency but was tremendously important in constituting the sense of
identity of the towns that it served.

Late Victorian Britain

State and societyFrom the 1880s a mounting sense of the limits of the liberal, regulative
state became apparent. One reflection of this awareness was the
increasing perception of national decline, relative to the increasing
strength of other European countries and the United States. This
awareness was reinforced by British military failures in the South
African War (Boer War) of 1899–1902, a “free enterprise war” in which
free enterprise was found wanting. One consequence of this and other
developments was the growth of movements aimed at “national efficiency”
as a means of establishing a more effective state machine. The
recognition of social problems at home—such as the “discovery” of urban
poverty in 1880s in the assumed presence of plenty and increasing
anxiety about the “labour question”—also raised questions about the
adequacy of the state in dealing with the mounting problems of an
increasingly populous and complex society. Toward the end of the
century, the possibility of a violent outcome in the increasingly
intractable problem of Ireland brought existing constitutional methods
into question. Behind much of this anxiety was a sense that the Third
Reform Act of 1884 (see Reform Bill) and changes in local government
were precipitating a much more democratic polity, for which the
classical liberal state had no easy answers. The example of what was
called at the time municipal socialism, especially as it existed in
Birmingham under the direction of its mayor, Joseph Chamberlain
(1873–76), indicated what the local state could accomplish. Instead of
the old “natural order” religion that had underpinned the state
previously, different currents of thought emerged that saw the state and
community as necessary for individual self-realization. German idealism,
socialism, and new liberalism (see libertarianism) all encompassed
different ways of rethinking the state.

This rethinking revolved around the belief that the operation of the
state must incorporate consideration of the collective characteristics
of society—that is, solidarity, interdependence, and common identity—in
a much more direct way than hitherto. Indeed, the idea of the “social”
came to characterize the entire period and even much later eras. Notions
of a distinct social sphere, separate from the economic and political
realms, had emerged much earlier, based upon the idea that the
characteristics of this social realm were evident in the biological,
vital characteristics of populations, so that society was very often
understood in organic terms. The influence of Malthus in the early 19th
century and Darwin in the mid-19th century contributed powerfully to
this worldview, giving rise to late 19th-century representations of
society in the strongly biological terms of “social eugenics” and other
variations of “racial” thought, such as the idea of the “degeneration”
of the working class. From about the turn of the 20th century, the
concept of the social realm as autonomous developed alongside and partly
incorporated older understandings. The social question became a
sociological question, as indeed it has remained until very recently in
British history. Society was now understood, unlike in earlier times, to
work according to its own laws and to be divorced from moral questions,
although, in practice, political interventions were invariably designed
to change moral behaviour.

One major result of this questioning of the state and of new
conceptions of society was the extensive social legislation of the
Liberal administrations after 1905, which is widely seen as the
foundation of the 20th-century welfare state. The new Liberal government
embarked upon a program of social legislation that involved free school
meals (1905), a school medical service (1907), and the Children’s Act
(1908). The Old Age Pensions Act (1908) granted pensions under
prescribed conditions to people over age 70, and in 1908 the miners were
given a statutory working day of eight hours. In 1909 trade boards were
set up to fix wages in designated industries in which there was little
or no trade union strength, and labour exchanges were created to try to
reduce unemployment. In 1911 the National Insurance Act was passed,
whereby the state and employers supplemented employees’ contributions
towards protection against unemployment and ill health. This act clearly
represented a departure from the manner in which government had been
carried out, as it began to be executed in supposed accordance with the
social characteristics of the governed (age, family circumstances,
gender, labour). Under this new dispensation, individual rights, as well
as the rights of families, were secured not by individual economic
action but by state action and by the provision of pensions and
benefits. These new rights were secured as social rights, so that
individual rights were connected to a web of obligations, rights, and
solidarities extending across the individual’s life, across the lives of
all individuals in a population, and between individuals across
generations—in short, a network of relations that was in fact one early
version of society as a sui generis entity.

However, much of this new relationship of state and society was still
recognizably liberal in the older sense, constituting a compact of
social and individual responsibility. At the heart of this compact was
the belief that it was necessary to safeguard the individual from the
unfettered operation of the free market, while at the same time making
sure that there must be an obligation to obtain gainful employment.
Contributory pension schemes required individuals to make regular
payments into them rather than providing social insurance from general
taxation. The National Insurance Act provided a framework within which
workers were to practice self-help, and, although involvement was
mandatory, the administration of the legislation was largely through
voluntary institutions. David Lloyd George, who did most to push the
legislation through, himself combined these characteristics of old and
new liberalism. At the same time, in practice this new formula of
government emerged in a very piecemeal and haphazard way, often driven
by the circumstances of the moment, not least the circumstances of party
politics. Moreover, the circumstances of war were of overwhelming
importance. It was World War I in particular that fostered the idea of
the increased importance of the interventionist, collectivist state. The
demands of winning the war required an unparalleled intervention in a
running of the economy and in the operations of social life,
particularly when the radical Liberal Lloyd George took power in 1916.
Perhaps the most important factor legitimizing the increased role of the
state was conscription in the armed services, and the most important
general outcome was the idea that “planning” (understood in many
different ways) was from this point forward a fully legitimate part of
governmental enterprise. Nonetheless, despite the piecemeal nature of
the change, what is striking is how this understanding of the
relationship between state and society obtained across the whole
political spectrum and how it lasted so long. This increased role of the
state was accompanied, after World War I, by the increasing
specialization and professionalization of an expanding civil service.

The political situation

Gladstone and ChamberlainGladstone’s second administration (1880–85) did not live up to the
promise of its election victory. Indeed, in terms of political logic, it
seemed likely in 1880 that the Gladstonian Liberal Party would
eventually split into Whig and radical components, the latter to be led
by Joseph Chamberlain. This development was already foreshadowed in the
cabinet that Gladstone assembled, which was neither socially uniform nor
politically united. Eight of the 11 members were Whigs, but one of the
other three—Chamberlain—represented a new and aggressive urban
radicalism, less interested in orthodox statements of liberal
individualism than in the uncertain aspiration and striving of the
different elements in the mass electorate. At the opposite end of the
spectrum from Chamberlain’s municipal socialism were the Whigs, the
largest group in the cabinet but the smallest group in the country. Many
of them were already abandoning the Liberal Party; all of them were
nervous about the kind of radical program that Chamberlain and the newly
founded National Liberal Federation (1877) were advocating and about the
kind of caucus-based party organization that Chamberlain favoured
locally and nationally. For the moment, however, Gladstone was the man
of the hour, and Chamberlain himself conceded that he was indispensable.

The government carried out a number of important reforms culminating
in the Third Reform Act of 1884 and the Redistribution Act of 1885. The
former continued the trend toward universal male suffrage by giving the
vote to agricultural labourers, thereby tripling the electorate, and the
latter robbed 79 towns with populations under 15,000 of their separate
representation. For the first time the franchise reforms ignored the
traditional claims of property and wealth and rested firmly on the
democratic principle that the vote ought to be given to people as a
matter of right, not of expediency.

The most difficult problems continued to arise in relation to foreign
affairs and, above all, to Ireland. When in 1881 the Boers defeated the
British at Majuba Hill and Gladstone abandoned the attempt to hold the
Transvaal, there was considerable public criticism. And in the same
year, when he agreed to the bombardment of Alexandria in a successful
effort to break a nationalist revolt in Egypt, he lost the support of
the aged radical John Bright. In 1882 Egypt was occupied, thereby
adding, against Gladstone’s own inclinations, to British imperial
commitments. A rebellion in the Sudan in 1885 led to the massacre of
Gen. Charles Gordon and his garrison at Khartoum (see Siege of Khartoum)
two days before the arrival of a mission to relieve him. Large numbers
of Englishmen held Gladstone personally responsible, and in June 1885 he
resigned after a defeat on an amendment to the budget.

The Irish questionThe Irish question loomed ominously as soon as Parliament assembled in
1880, for there was now an Irish nationalist group of more than 60
members led by Charles Stewart Parnell, most of them committed to Irish
Home Rule; in Ireland itself, the Land League, founded in 1879, was
struggling to destroy the power of the landlord. Parnell embarked on a
program of agrarian agitation in 1881, at the same time that his
followers at Westminster were engaged in various kinds of parliamentary
obstructionism. Gladstone’s response was the Irish Land Act, based on
guaranteeing “three fs”—fair rents, fixity of tenure, and free sale—and
a tightening up of the rules of closure in parliamentary debate. The
Land Act did not go far enough to satisfy Parnell, who continued to make
speeches couched in violent language, and, after a coercion act was
passed by Parliament in the face of Irish obstructionism, he was
arrested. Parnell was released in April 1882, however, after an
understanding had been reached that he would abandon the land war and
the government would abandon coercion. Lord Frederick Charles Cavendish,
a close friend of Gladstone and the brother of the Whig leader, Lord
Spencer Hartington, was sent to Dublin as chief secretary on a mission
of peace, but the whole policy was undermined when Cavendish, along with
the permanent undersecretary, was murdered in Phoenix Park, Dublin,
within a few hours of landing in Ireland.

Between 1881 and 1885 Gladstone coupled a somewhat stiffer policy in
Ireland with minor measures of reform, but in 1885, when the
Conservatives returned to power under Robert Arthur Salisbury, the Irish
question forced itself to the forefront again. Henry Herbert, earl of
Carnarvon, the new lord lieutenant of Ireland, was a convert to Home
Rule and followed a more liberal policy than his predecessor. In the
subsequent general election of November 1885, Parnell secured every
Irish seat but one outside Ulster and urged Irish voters in British
constituencies—a large group mostly concentrated in a limited number of
places such as Lancashire and Clydeside—to vote Conservative. The result
of the election was a Liberal majority of 86 over the Conservatives,
which was almost exactly equivalent to the number of seats held by the
Irish group, who thus controlled the balance of power in Parliament. The
Conservatives stayed in office, but when in December 1885 the newspapers
reported a confidential interview with Gladstone’s son, in which he had
stated (rightly) that his father had been converted to Home Rule,
Salisbury made it clear that he himself was not a convert, and Carnarvon
resigned. All Conservative contacts with Parnell ceased, and a few weeks
later, in January 1886, after the Conservatives had been defeated in
Parliament on a radical amendment for agrarian reform, Salisbury,
lacking continued Irish support, resigned and Gladstone returned to
power.

Split of the Liberal PartyGladstone’s conversion had been gradual but profound, and it had more
far-reaching political consequences for Britain than for Ireland. It
immediately alienated him further from most of the Whigs and from a
considerable number of radicals led by Chamberlain. He had hoped at
first that Home Rule would be carried by an agreement between the
parties, but Salisbury had no intention of imitating Peel. Gladstone
made his intentions clear by appointing John Morley, a Home Rule
advocate, as Irish secretary, and in April 1886 he introduced a Home
Rule bill. The Liberals remained divided, and 93 of them united with the
Conservatives to defeat the measure. Gladstone appealed to the country
and was decisively beaten in the general election, in which 316
Conservatives were returned to Westminster along with 78 Liberal
Unionists, the new name chosen by those Liberals who refused to back
Home Rule. The Liberals mustered only 191 seats, and there were 85 Irish
nationalists. Whigs and radicals, who had often seemed likely to split
Gladstone’s 1880 government on left-right lines, were now united against
the Gladstonians, and all attempts at Liberal reunion failed.

Chamberlain, the astute radical leader, like many others of his class
and generation, ceased to regard social reform as a top priority and
worked in harness with Hartington, his Whig counterpart. In 1895 they
both joined a Salisbury government. The Liberals were, in effect, pushed
into the wilderness, although they held office briefly and unhappily
from 1892 to 1895. Gladstone, 82 years old when he formed his last
government, actually succeeded in carrying a Home Rule bill in the
Commons in 1893, with the help of Irish votes (Parnell’s power had been
broken as a result of a divorce case in 1890, and he died in 1891), but
the bill was thrown out by the Lords. He resigned in 1894, to be
succeeded by Archibald Primrose, earl of Rosebery, who further split the
party; in the general election of 1895, the Conservatives could claim
that they were the genuinely popular party, backed by the urban as well
as the rural electorate. Although Salisbury usually stressed the
defensive aspects of Conservatism, both at home and abroad, Chamberlain
and his supporters were able to mobilize considerable working-class as
well as middle-class support for a policy of crusading imperialism.

Imperialism and British politicsImperialism was the key word of the 1890s, just as Home Rule had been in
the critical decade of the 1880s, and the cause of empire was associated
not merely with the economic interests of businessmen looking for
materials and markets and the enthusiasm of crowds excited by the
adventure of empire but also with the traditional lustre of the crown.
Disraeli had emphasized the last of these associations, just as
Chamberlain emphasized the first. In the middle years of the century it
had been widely held that colonies were burdens and that materials and
markets were most effectively acquired through trade. Thus, an “informal
empire” had been created that was as much dependent on Britain as the
formal empire was. Nonetheless, even during these years, as a result of
pressure from the periphery, the process of establishing protectorates
or of acquiring colonies had never halted, despite a number of colonial
crises and small colonial wars in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Most of
the new acquisitions were located in tropical areas of the world and
were populated mainly by non-Europeans.

There were further crises during the 1880s and ’90s, when the
Liberals were divided on both tactics and objectives, and public opinion
was stirred. When Chamberlain chose to take over the Colonial Office in
1895, he was acknowledging the opportunities, both economic and
political, afforded by a vast “undeveloped estate.” The same radical
energies that he had once devoted to civic improvement were now directed
toward imperial problems. The argument about empire assumed an
increasingly popular dimension. Boys’ books and magazines, for example,
focused on the adventure of empire and the courage and sense of duty of
empire builders, and textbooks often taught the same lessons. So also
did the popular press. In consequence, the language of imperialism
changed.

However, it was difficult to pull the empire together politically or
constitutionally. Certainly, moving toward federation was a challenging
task since the interests of different parts were already diverging, and
in the last resort only British power—above all, sea power—held the
empire together. The processes of imperial expansion were always
complex, and there was neither one dominant theory of empire nor one
single explanation of why it grew. Colonies that were dominated by
people of British descent, such as Canada or New Zealand and the states
of Australia, had been given substantial powers of self-government since
the Durham Report of 1839 and the Canada Union Act of 1840. Yet India,
“the brightest jewel in the British crown,” was held not by consent but
by conquest. The Indian Mutiny of 1857–58 was suppressed, and a year
later the East India Company was abolished and the new title of viceroy
was instituted. Imperial control was tightened too, through the
construction of a network of railways. Thomas Macaulay’s dream that
India would one day be free and that such a day would be the happiest in
British history seemed to have receded, although the nationalist
movement that emerged after the first Indian National Congress in 1885
was eventually to gain in strength. Meanwhile, given the strategic
importance of India to the military establishment, attempts were made to
justify British rule in terms of benefits of law and order that were
said to accrue to Indians. “The white man’s burden,” as the writer and
poet Rudyard Kipling saw it, was a burden of responsibility.

It was difficult for the British voter to understand or to appreciate
this network of motives and interests. Chamberlain himself was always
far less interested in India than in the “kith-and-kin dominions”
(populated primarily by those of British descent) and in the new
tropical empire that was greatly extended in area between 1884 and 1896,
when 2.5 million square miles (6.5 million square km) of territory fell
under British control. Even he did not fully understand either the rival
aspirations of different dominions or the relationship between economic
development in the “formal” empire and trade and investment in the
“informal” empire where the British flag did not fly.

Queen Victoria’s jubilees in 1887 and 1897 involved both imperial
pageantry and imperial conferences, but, between 1896 and 1902, public
interest in problems of empire was intensified not so much by pageantry
as by crisis. British-Boer relations in South Africa, always tense, were
further worsened after the Jameson raid of December 1895, and, in
October 1899, war began. The early stages of the struggle were
favourable to the Boers, and it was not until spring 1900 that superior
British equipment began to count. British troops entered Pretoria in
June 1900 and Paul Kruger, the Boer president, fled to Europe, where
most governments had given him moral support against the British.
Thereafter, the Boers employed guerrilla tactics, and the war did not
end until May 1902. It was the most expensive of all the 19th-century
“little wars,” with the British employing 450,000 troops, of whom 22,000
never returned. Just as the Crimean War had focused attention on
“mismanagement,” so the South African (Boer) War led to demands not only
for greater “efficiency” but also for more enlightened social policies
in relation to health and education.

While the war lasted, it emphasized the political differences within
the Liberal Party and consolidated Conservative-Liberal Unionist
strength. The imperialism of the Liberal prime minister, Lord Rosebery,
was totally uncongenial to young pro-Boer Liberals like Lloyd George. A
middle group of Liberals emerged, but it was not until after 1903 that
party rifts were healed. The Unionists won the “khaki election” of 1900
(which took its name from the uniforms of the British army, a reflection
of its occurrence in the middle of the war) and secured a new lease of
power for nearly six years, but their unity also was threatened after
the Peace of Vereeniging, which ended the war in May 1902. Salisbury
retired in 1902, to be succeeded by his nephew, Arthur Balfour, a
brilliant man but a tortuous and insecure politician. There had been an
even bigger break in January 1901 when the queen died, after a brief
illness, at age 81. She had ruled for 64 years and her death seemed to
mark not so much the end of a reign as the end of an age.

There were significant changes in terms of the impression organized
labour made on politics. Some of the new union leaders were confessed
socialists, anxious to use political as well as economic power to secure
their objectives, and a number of socialist organizations emerged
between 1880 and 1900—all conscious, at least intermittently, that,
whatever their differences, they were part of a “labour movement.” The
Social Democratic Federation, influenced by Marxism, was founded in
1884; however, it was never more than a tiny and increasingly sectarian
organization. The Independent Labour Party, founded in Bradford in 1893,
had a more general appeal, while the Fabian Society, founded in 1883–84,
included intellectuals who were to play a large part in 20th-century
labour politics. In February 1900 a labour representation conference was
held in London at which trade unionists and socialists agreed to found a
committee (the Labour Representation Committee), with Ramsay MacDonald
as first secretary, to promote the return of Labour members to
Parliament. This conference marked the beginning of the 20th-century
Labour Party, which, with Liberal support, won 29 seats in the general
election of 1906. Although until 1914 the party at Westminster for the
most part supported the Liberals, in 1909 it secured the allegiance of
the “Lib-Lab” miners’ members. Financially backed by the trade unions,
it was eventually to take the place of the Liberal Party as the second
party in the British state.

The return of the LiberalsThe Liberals returned to power in December 1905 after Balfour had
resigned. Between the end of the South African War and this date, they
had become more united as the Conservatives had disintegrated. In 1903
Chamberlain had taken up the cause of protection, thereby disturbing an
already uneasy balance within Balfour’s cabinet. He failed to win
large-scale middle- or working-class support outside Parliament, as he
had hoped, and the main effect of his propaganda was to draw rival
groups of Liberals together. In the general election of 1906, the
Liberals, led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a cautious Scot who had
stayed clear of the extreme factions during the South African War, won
377 seats, giving them an enormous majority of 84 over all other parties
combined. The new cabinet included radicals and Liberal imperialists,
and when Campbell-Bannerman retired in 1908, H.H. Asquith moved from the
Home Office to the premiership.

Social reform had not been the chief cry at the general election,
which was fought mainly on the old issues of free trade, temperance
reform, and education. In many constituencies there was evidence of
Nonconformist grievances against the Balfour-engineered education act of
1902 that had abolished the school boards, transferred educational
responsibilities to the all-purpose local authorities, and laid the
foundations of a national system of secondary education. Yet local and
national inquiries, official and unofficial, into the incidence of
poverty had pointed to the need for public action to relieve distress,
and from the start the budget of 1909, fashioned by Lloyd George, as
chancellor of the Exchequer, set out deliberately to raise money to
“wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness.” The money was
to come in part from a supertax on high incomes and from capital gains
on land sales. The budget so enraged Conservative opinion, inside and
outside Parliament, that the Lords, already hostile to the trend of
Liberal legislation, rejected it, thereby turning a political debate
into a constitutional one concerning the powers of the House of Lords.
Passions were as strong as they had been in 1831, yet, in the ensuing
general election of January 1910, the Liberal majority was greatly
reduced, and the balance of power in Parliament was now held by Labour
and Irish nationalist members. The death of King Edward VII in May 1910
and the succession of the politically inexperienced George V added to
the confusion, and it proved impossible to reach an agreement between
the parties on the outlines of a Parliament bill to define or curb the
powers of the House of Lords. After a Liberal Parliament bill had been
defeated, a second general election in December 1910 produced political
results similar to those earlier in the year, and it was not until
August 1911 that the peers eventually passed the Parliament Act of 1911
by 131 votes to 114. The act provided that finance-related bills could
become law without the assent of the Lords and that other bills would
also become law if they passed in the Commons but failed in the Lords
three times within two years. The act was finally passed only after the
Conservative leadership had repudiated the “diehard peers” who refused
to be intimidated by a threat to create more peers.

In the course of the struggle over the Parliament bill, strong, even
violent, feelings had been roused among lords who had seldom bothered
hitherto to attend their house. Their intransigence provided a keynote
to four years of equally fierce struggle on many other issues in the
country, with different sectional groups turning to noisy direct action.
The Liberals remained in power, carrying important new legislation, but
they faced so much opposition from extremists, who cared little about
either conventional political behaviour or the rule of law, that these
years have been called by the American historian George Dangerfield “the
strange death of Liberal England.” The most important legislation was
once more associated with Lloyd George—the National Insurance Act of
1911, which Parliament accepted without difficulty but which was the
subject of much hostile criticism in the press and was bitterly opposed
by doctors and duchesses. Nor did it win unanimous support from labour.
The parliamentary Labour Party itself mattered less during these years,
however, than extra-parliamentary trade union protests, some of them
violent in character—“a great upsurge of elemental forces.” There was a
wave of strikes in 1911 and 1912, some of them tinged with syndicalist
ideology, all of them asserting, in difficult economic circumstances for
the workingman, claims that had seldom been made before. Old-fashioned
trade unionists were almost as unpopular with the rank and file as they
were with capitalists. In June 1914, less than two months before the
outbreak of World War I, a “triple alliance” of transport workers,
miners, and railwaymen was formed to buttress labour solidarity. In
parallel to labour agitation, the suffragists, fighting for women’s
rights, resorted to militant tactics that not only embarrassed Asquith’s
government but tested the whole local and national machinery for
maintaining order. The Women’s Social and Political Union, founded in
1903, was prepared to encourage illegal acts, including bombing and
arson, which led to sharp police retaliation, severe sentences, harsh
and controversial treatment in prison, and even martyrdom.

The issue that created the greatest difficulties, however, was one of
the oldest: Ireland. In April 1912, armed with the new powers of the
Parliament Act, Asquith introduced a new Home Rule bill. Conservative
opposition to it was reinforced on this occasion by a popular Protestant
movement in Ulster, and the new Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law,
who had replaced Balfour in 1911, gave his covert support to army
mutineers in Ulster. No compromises were acceptable, and the struggle to
settle the fate of Ireland was still in full spate when war broke out in
August 1914. Most ominously for the Liberals, the Irish Home Rule
supporters at Westminster were losing ground in southern Ireland, where
in 1913 a militant working-class movement entered into close alliance
with the nationalist forces of Sinn Féin. Ireland was obviously on the
brink of civil war.

The international crisisThe seeds of international war, sown long before 1900, were nourished
between the resignation of Salisbury in 1902 and August 1914. Two
intricate systems of agreements and alliances—the Triple Alliance of
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy and the Triple Entente of France,
Russia, and Britain—faced each other in 1914. Both were backed by a
military and naval apparatus (Britain had been building a large fleet,
and Richard Haldane had been reforming the army), and both could appeal
to half-informed or uninformed public opinion. The result was that a war
that was to break the continuities of history started as a popular war.

The Liberal government under Asquith faced a number of diplomatic
crises from 1908 onward. Throughout a period of recurring tension, its
foreign minister, Sir Edward Grey, often making decisions that were not
discussed by the cabinet as a whole, strengthened the understanding with
France that had been initiated by his Conservative predecessor in 1903.
An alliance had already been signed with Japan in 1902, and in 1907
agreements were reached with Russia. Meanwhile, naval rivalry with
Germany familiarized Britons with the notion that, if war came, it would
be with Germany. The 1914 crisis began in the Balkans, where the heir to
the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated in June 1914. Soon Austria
(backed by Germany) and Russia (supported by France) faced off. The
British cabinet was divided, but, after the Germans invaded Belgium on
August 4, thereby violating a neutrality that Britain was committed by
treaty to support, Britain and Germany went to war.

Lord Asa Briggs
Patrick Joyce

Economy and societyChanges in economic conditions during the last decades of the 19th
century were of crucial importance. Mid-Victorian prosperity had reached
its peak in a boom that collapsed in 1873. Thereafter, although national
income continued to increase (nearly quadrupling between 1851 and 1911),
there was persistent pressure on profit margins, with a price fall that
lasted until the mid-1890s. Contemporaries talked misleadingly of a
“great depression,” but, however misleading the phrase was as a
description of the movement of economic indexes, the period as a whole
was one of doubt and tension. There was anxious concern about both
markets and materials, but the retardation in the national rate of
growth to below 2 percent per annum was even harder to bear because the
growth rates of competitors were rising, sometimes in spectacular
fashion.

The interests of different sections of the community diverged between
1870 and 1900 as they had before the mid-Victorian period. In
particular, grain- and meat-producing farmers bore the full weight of
foreign competition in cereals, and many, though not all, industrialists
felt the growing pressure of foreign competition in both old and new
industries. As a result of improved transport, including storage and
refrigeration facilities, along with the application of improved
agricultural machinery, overseas cereal producers fully penetrated the
British market. In 1877 the price of English wheat stood at 56 shillings
9 pence a quarter (compared with 54 shillings 6 pence in 1846); for the
rest of the century, it never again came within 10 shillings of that
figure. During the 1890s, therefore, there was a sharp fall in rent, a
shift in land ownership, and a challenge to the large estate in the
cereal-growing and meat-producing areas of the country. The fact that
dairy and fruit farmers flourished did not relieve the pessimism of most
spokesmen for the threatened landed interests.

In industry, there were new forms of power and a trend toward bigger
plants and more impersonal organization. There were also efforts
throughout the period to increase cartels and amalgamations. Britain was
never as strong or as innovative in the age of steel as it had been in
the earlier age of iron. By 1896 British steel output was less than that
of either the United States or Germany, while the British textile
industry was declining sharply. Exports fell between 1880 and 1900 from
£105 million to £95 million.

Yet the country’s economic position would have been completely
different had it not been for Britain’s international economic strength
as banker and financier. During years of economic challenge at home,
capital exports greatly increased, until they reached a figure of almost
£200 million per annum before 1914, and investment income poured in to
rectify adverse balance of trade accounts. Investing during these years
in both “formal” and “informal” empire was more profitable, if more
risky, than investing at home. But it also contributed to domestic
obsolescence, particularly in the old industries. Thus, ultimately,
there was a price to pay for imperial glory. During the last 20 years of
peace before 1914, when Britain’s role as rentier was at its height,
international prices began to rise again, and they continued to rise,
with fluctuations, until after the end of World War I. Against this
backdrop, the City of London was at the centre of international markets
of capital, money, and commodities.

Meanwhile, whether prices were falling or rising, labour in Britain
was increasingly discontented, articulate, and organized. Throughout the
period, national income per capita grew faster than the continuing
population growth (which stayed at above 10 percent per decade until
1911, although the birth rate had fallen sharply after 1900), but
neither the growth of income nor the falling level of retail prices
until the mid-1890s made for industrial peace. By the end of the
century, when pressure on real wages was once again increasing, there
were two million trade unionists in unskilled unions as well as in
skilled unions of the mid-century type, and by 1914 the figure had
doubled.

In terms of the distribution of the labour force in this period,
among the most striking changes was the development of white-collar
occupations. Between 1881 and 1921, of male workers, those in public
administration, professional occupations, and subordinate services,
along with those in commercial occupations, increased from some 700,000
to 1,700,000 (out of a total workforce of some 9,000,000 in 1881 and
13,500,000 in 1921). Those in transport and communications almost
doubled in number to 1,500,000, while those who worked in the
manufacture of metal, machines, implements, and vehicles increased from
almost 1,000,000 to over 2,000,000. Those in mining also doubled in
number, to 1,200,000 in 1921. These were the real growth areas in the
economy. The number of individuals involved in the agricultural sector,
on the other hand, declined but exceeded 1,250,000 in 1921 and thus made
up a still important component of the occupational structure of the
country. All other sectors remained stable or lost workers, with the
growth industry of the early 19th century, textiles and clothing,
decreasing from about 1,000,000 to 750,000 workers in 1921.

The economy lost a good deal of its old artisan character.
Accompanying this erosion of artisan power at the point of production
were some tendencies toward increases of scale in factory production. To
some degree there also was a decline in the old hierarchies of skill,
most notably in the erosion of the position of artisans, the
mid-Victorian labour aristocracy. At the same time, the characteristics
of the social structure of production in the preceding period were still
apparent, namely “combined and uneven” development, whereby old and new
forms of industrial organization and production methods were often
combined, and overall development was not uniform. The result was that
skill and authority were still distributed in a very complex way
throughout industry. Older historical accounts concerning the late 19th-
and early 20th-century formation of an increasingly de-skilled and
uniform labour force have given way to a more nuanced picture, so that
the rise of the Labour Party is no longer interpreted, as it earlier
was, simply as a consequence of the supposed emergence of this
de-skilled labour force. Moreover, in line with more recent scholarship,
the emergence of the Labour Party in the late 19th and early 20th
century is no longer viewed as a reflex reaction to economic conditions
or to the situation of workers; instead, it is understood in terms of
the role of political intervention and political language in shaping
what was indeed a new sense of class unity and not as a direct
expression of the labour force itself, which was in fact still
strikingly divided not only by skill but by many other characteristics
of workplace experience.

The number of women in professional occupations and subordinate
services doubled to 440,000 in 1921, out of a total workforce of some
5,500,000 women. This shift did much to reshape women’s changing
understanding of themselves, particularly among the middle classes,
where the more public world of work called into question exclusively
domestic definitions of femininity. Women’s employment in textile and
clothing manufacture was, however, still massive, with the real decline
in the production of textiles not coming until after World War I. In
1881 the textile and clothing industry employed nearly 1,500,000 women;
though by 1921 this number had shrunk, it remained considerable, at
1,300,000. Within the textile industry, women’s trade unions made some
headway, but it is testimony to the power of traditional paternalist
understandings of gender relationships among workers that male authority
still obtained for the most part in both the home and the workplace,
where women were excluded from the better-paid and more-skilled jobs.
Domestic service was still the bedrock of women’s employment, comprising
some 1,750,000 workers in 1881 out of a total of 3,900,000, though by
1921 this number had grown to 1,800,000 but shrunk in relative
importance.

Family and genderThe structure of families in this period was still relatively diverse
and significantly unlike 21st-century versions of the nuclear family
based upon co-residing parents and young children. There is some
evidence to suggest that industrialization strengthened rather than
weakened kinship ties and intergenerational co-residence, because of the
practical help resident grandparents could render to working mothers.
Relationships across generations, both within and outside the household,
continued to be important. Despite the migration of production from home
to factory, the traditional identity of the family as a productive unit
survived quite strongly into the 20th century, notably among shopkeepers
and other self-employed workers, among tenant farmers, and particularly
among the still important area of “homework” production, which, as a
component of the late 19th-century clothing industry, went through a
massive revival. The family retained many residual economic roles and
acquired some new ones. For example, there was still a strong tendency
for occupations to pass from father to son in all classes. The economy
of workers, however, was much more likely to involve the collective
earnings of father, mother, and children, compared with the family
economy of those who were better-off.

In mid-19th-century England and Wales (Scotland had its own divorce,
custody, and property rights), a husband had absolute right of control
over his wife’s person, as well as considerable rights over her
property. He also had sole responsibility for the rearing and
guardianship of children, and the common law gave him absolute freedom
to bequeath his property outside his family. A wife, in contrast, had
neither legal duties nor enforceable legal rights, and, indeed, under
common law her juridical personality was totally submerged in that of
her husband. During this period, the situation was to undergo remarkable
changes as the law began to make inroads into not only the rights of
husbands but also the rights of parents generally. By the end of this
period, legal intervention had largely eroded the absolute paternal
rights enshrined in the common law, although sexual relations between
husbands and wives remained largely untouched by legal change. However,
cultural changes were to lag behind legal ones.

For the better-off in society, marriage was gradually transformed
from what was in large measure a property contract into a union in which
companionship and consumerism played a larger role. That women were
increasingly becoming consumers was reflected in the Married Women’s
Property Acts of 1882, which allowed women to control their own income.
The period was therefore to see changes within marriage in the direction
of greater independence for women, as well as changes in the status and
independence of women outside marriage. At the same time, the legal and
administrative code remained decidedly biased against women; for
instance, income tax was framed as a duty of the male head of household.
In terms of what might be called upper-middle-class society, traditional
gender roles were still extremely powerful: girls were educated at home
up to World War I and were trained for the social conventions of home
life and home management; boys were sent to school, often to boarding
school; and more companionate versions of spousal relationship were
accompanied by the preservation of distance between parents and
children, with much child care still being left to servants. Lower down
the scale, things were much the same, although few middle-class
households could afford a wholly idle wife.

In this period it was widely established that natural processes no
longer gave an adequate account of motherhood, which was increasingly
seen as an activity of great moral, intellectual, and technical
complexity that had to be learned artificially like any other skill.
Indeed, there was an unprecedented concern with the nature of
motherhood, which was not seen as a private matter but as something
involving the future of society, the country, the empire, and indeed the
“race.” This concern was an expression of changing gender roles; but,
while on one hand it embodied a reaction against forces of change, in
some respects it also signaled the movement toward greater gender
equality. The role of the state was to reflect these changes, as its
intervention in family life also reached unprecedented levels.

From the 1860s to the ’80s, the agitation surrounding the Contagious
Diseases Acts—an attempt to control venereal disease in the armed forces
that involved state regulation and inspection of prostitution—laid the
foundations for subsequent feminism. The campaign for the repeal of the
acts generated public discussion of the double standard of licence for
men and chastity for women. This agitation brought women into the public
sphere much more directly than before and in new ways. Moreover, it
served to complement changes in education, charity work, political
organization, and associational life (which for women expanded
considerably in this period), all of which took women outside the home,
especially better-off women. This was also the case with the growth of
women’s role as consumers, with shopping and the new department stores
further increasing women’s involvement in public urban life.

The discussion generated by these acts resulted in a series of
feminist responses varying from the more socially, sometimes
politically, conservative emphasis on traditional family roles and on
maternalism, seen in the “social purity” campaigns of the late 19th
century (with their links to “social hygiene” movements espousing
hygiene as the gateway to moral betterment), to the more radical,
egalitarian political feminism of the early 20th century. The latter
form was itself split into radical, socialist, and constitutional
variants. In 1903 the women’s suffrage movement split dramatically over
the issue of the parliamentary vote, some pursuing the vote as merely
one item on a long list of political and extra-political reforms and
others concentrating on the single aim of obtaining the vote. These
agitations also influenced men’s conception of themselves, notably in
response to the social purity movement’s emphasis on the importance of
chastity for men as well as women. Male roles were further defined in
the 1880s with the consolidation of male homosexuality as a distinct
social identity, given legal definition at the time (in the Labouchere
amendment of 1885, which criminalized homosexuality as gross indecency),
not least in the famous case involving the arrest and imprisonment of
Irish poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde. From this time the rise of
“scientific” understandings of sexuality, including the science of
sexology, also served to redefine gender roles. However, there as in so
many other realms, recognition for women lagged behind that for men, and
it was not until the 1920s that a similar delineation of lesbian
identity became fully apparent.

Mass culture Class distinctions in cultural life continued to be very important.
“Rational recreation” (productive and socially responsible recreation)
remained an aim of those who wished to reform the culture of the lower
classes. However, it also came to characterize the provision of
recreation for the upper classes too. The idea of “playing the game” and
“the game for its own sake” represented an extension of rational
recreation into the sphere of sports, particularly as developed in the
public schools, which in this period were reformed so as to institute a
sense of public duty and private responsibility among the propertied
classes. The cult of the disinterested amateur was part of the notion of
the classically trained English gentleman, whose education and sense of
moral duty purportedly created a moral superiority and disinterestedness
that uniquely fitted him to rule. The development of popular forms of
literature aimed at boys in this period served to glorify this
particular manifestation of gentlemanly rule. More broadly, the model of
the reformed public school itself, as well as a reformed Oxbridge (the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had been restructured in large part
somewhat earlier to meet the needs of a changing, moralized civil
service), came to have a considerable influence on educational
institutions in Britain. The masculine emphasis in sports was
complemented by the club life of the upper classes, which, while always
decidedly masculine, in the 1880s and ’90s, in terms of the development
of London clubland, served even more to emphasize expressions of
masculine identity in leisure activities.

The move from the sociability that characterized upper-class culture
in the 18th century to the more didactic, socially concerned
interventions of the early and mid-19th century gave way to a gradual
involvement in hitherto forbidden forms, forms now suitably sanitized
and made rational (or, as in the case of classical music, made sacred).
It was not only music that became respectable but also the reading of
novels, the playing of cards, and theatre attendance. The growth of the
“legitimate” theatre from the 1880s, in distinction to more popular,
melodramatic forms, is indicative of this development. Institutions and
locations that were defined by associations with class especially
harboured these changes, most notably the school and the suburb. As the
transport system developed, especially the expansion of railway
commuting from the 1870s and ’80s, suburban life grew in importance,
most notably in London. However, it was not only the propertied in
society who sought to create rational recreation: in continuance of
earlier attempts to influence change from within the labouring
population, the reform of low culture was sought by the appeal to high
culture in radical and socialist movements such as the Cooperative
movement, the Workers Educational Association, and, after World War I,
the Left Book Club. Radical rationalist recreation took the form of
rambling, bicycling, and educational holidays.

However, this very negotiation of the hitherto forbidden cultural
forms also represented a qualification of the class character of culture
and the development of what came increasingly to be called “mass
culture.” In part this represented a nationalization of cultural life
that reflected the increasing importance of a mass polity. Britain also
became a more centralized, homogeneous national society. But a simple,
linear development toward uniform experience had not characterized
British history. The earlier development of modern British society had
seen an emphasis on the significance of local and regional cultures,
which echoed and reflected the relationship between state and society.
While the four nations of the British Isles had constituted a unitary
state since the end of the 18th century, Britain remained in the early
and mid-19th century a society that was highly diverse and localized.
Different cultural, religious, and legal traditions reinforced the very
diverse occupational and manufacturing structure that industrialization
brought with it. The importance of political decentralization was
reflected in very strong municipal cultures, so that the centre of
gravity of a good deal of British artistic and literary life long
continued to remain in the English provinces and within each of the
constituent nations. The growth of organized sports reflected not only
the social separation between classes but also the strength of regional
and local attachments.

Nationalization was apparent in an increasingly elaborate and
integrated communications structure represented in the railway, the
telegraph, the postal service, and later the telephone. By the beginning
of the 20th century, the local press, while strong, was beginning to
give way to mass-circulation newspapers, most famously the Daily Mail.
The nationwide retailing revolution apparent from the 1880s, along with
the development of an increasingly nationally coordinated and centrally
based entertainment industry, which could be seen, for example, in the
development of music hall, were part of the process too. So was the
migration of intellectual life into the universities, which tended to be
dominated by Oxbridge and University of London colleges, despite strong
provincial resistance and pride. London itself became the cultural
centre of the country and therefore the cultural centre of the British
Empire. A fundamental influence on this change was the shift in the
British economy from manufacturing industry to international finance
and, with it, the migration of wealth, prestige, fashion, and social
status away from the provinces to London.

While organized sports might express regional loyalties, their
increasingly organized and commercialized basis—whereby rules were drawn
up, leagues founded, and competitions inaugurated—served to coordinate
local loyalties on a national basis. National bodies were created, along
with national audiences. Spectatorship gave way to participation among
all classes. In this sense, a “mass” culture was evident. This culture,
however, might occur within and across class lines. For example,
professional football (soccer) and county cricket, the best-known
instances of mass sports, particularly in the early days, witnessed the
class distinction between “gentleman” and “players,” as well as
north-south differences. Particular sports developed along class lines:
tennis and golf, at least in England, were played by the higher orders
of society, and rugby was divided along the class lines, with rugby
union for the higher classes and rugby league for the lower classes.
(See rugby for the history and development of both traditions.) Indeed,
professional football has only relatively recently lost its
working-class character in Britain. Nonetheless, in the 20th century,
developments of mass culture across class lines were increasingly
important—with cultural and social homogeneity increasingly going hand
in hand.

Patrick Joyce

Britain from 1914 to the present

The political situation

World War I

The British declaration of war on Germany on Aug. 4, 1914, brought an
end to the threat of civil war in Ireland, which since March had
occupied Prime Minister H.H. Asquith’s Liberal cabinet almost to the
exclusion of everything else. Formally at least, party warfare came to
an end. The Conservatives agreed not to contest by-elections and to
support the government in matters pertaining to the war.

The Asquith coalitionSuch compromises were easy to make in autumn 1914, when the excitement
over the outbreak of war was high, causing a crush of enlistments, and
when it was still generally believed that the war would be over within
six months. By spring 1915, however, enthusiasm for the war began to
cool and recruiting fell off. Moreover, Asquith’s government seemed to
have lost its grip on affairs; newspapers carried reports of an
inadequate supply of ammunition on the Western Front, and on May 15 the
first sea lord, Adm. John Fisher, resigned. The Conservative leader,
Andrew Bonar Law, under pressure from his followers to take a stronger
stand, announced that his party would demand a debate on the conduct of
the war. Asquith quickly offered to form a coalition, thereby ending the
last Liberal government. The coalition consisted of Liberals,
Conservatives, and one Labourite.

In the new cabinet, announced on May 25, Arthur James Balfour
replaced Winston Churchill as first lord of the Admiralty. More
important, a new department, the Ministry of Munitions, was established
with the Liberal David Lloyd George at its head.

The coalition, which was supposed to allay tension among parties over
the conduct of the war, worked badly. Although the Ministry of Munitions
did indeed resolve the armament crisis surprisingly quickly,
dissatisfaction with Asquith’s relaxed management of affairs continued
and centred in the autumn of 1915 upon the rising demand, in the press
and among the Conservatives, for compulsory military service. With
apparent reluctance, the prime minister allowed an inadequate measure
for the conscription of unmarried men to be passed in January 1916. But
it was not until May 1916, after more controversy and threats of
resignation, that a comprehensive bill was passed for compulsory
enlistment of all men between ages 18 and 41.

Meanwhile, on April 24, 1916, Monday of Easter Week, a rebellion
broke out in Dublin directed at securing Irish independence. Violence
was suppressed within six days, and the surviving rebels were arrested
amid general derision from the Irish population. But Britain’s
punishment of the rebels, including 14 summary executions, quickly
turned Irish sympathy toward the men, who were now regarded as martyrs.
The Easter Rising was the beginning of the Irish war for independence.

Even though the rebellion was quelled, the problems of Ireland needed
to be addressed. Prime Minister Asquith called upon Lloyd George to try
to arrange for an immediate grant of Home Rule to be shared by the Irish
nationalist and unionist parties (the former being fully committed to
the principle of Home Rule, the latter only partially). Although a
compromise was in fact reached, discontent among senior unionists
prevented a bill from going forward. Thereafter Home Rule ceased to be
an issue because southern Ireland now wanted nothing but independence.
Asquith was further weakened.

The government also drew criticism for its war policies. For one,
Britain was unable to help Romania when it declared war upon the Central
Powers in the summer of 1916. More significantly, Britain launched its
first major independent military operation, the Battle of the Somme
(July 1 to Nov. 13, 1916), with disastrous results. On the first day of
battle, the British suffered almost 60,000 casualties. Although little
of strategic significance was accomplished, the battle brought the
reality of war home to Britain. (For details on the military aspects of
the war, see World War I.) Dissatisfaction with the government mounted
until, in the first week of December, Asquith and most of the senior
Liberal ministers were forced to resign. Lloyd George became prime
minister with a cabinet consisting largely of Conservatives.

Lloyd George Lloyd George governed Britain with a small “War Cabinet” of five
permanent members, only one of whom was a politician of standing.
Although Lloyd George had to take note of the opinions of Parliament and
of those around him and pay attention to the tides of public political
sentiment, the power to make decisions rested entirely with him. He was
faced with the same sentiments of apathy, discontent with the country’s
leadership, and war weariness that had brought down the Asquith
government. Not only had Britain’s supreme military effort in 1916
failed, but the war had lost its meaning. The British commitment to
defend Belgium (which had brought Britain into the war in the first
place) was forgotten, still more the Austro-Hungarian actions against
Serbia (which had not particularly troubled Britain anyway). Thus, in
the next two years, Lloyd George set out to reinvest the war with
meaning. Its purpose would be to create a better Britain and a safer
world. Victory promised hope for the future. Toward that goal he
established new ministries and brought workingmen into government. Lloyd
George’s reconstruction program was built on principles that were later
enunciated by U.S. Pres.Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points and his
slogan of ‘‘making the world safe for democracy.’’ Lloyd George’s own
slogan of 1918 was ‘‘to forge a nation fit for heroes to live in.’’

Lloyd George controlled the government but not the Liberal Party;
only a minority of Liberals in the House of Commons supported him, the
rest remaining loyal to Asquith. Worse, Lloyd George had no party
organization in the country. The division within the Liberal Party
hardened during the controversy over a statement he made in April 1918
concerning the strength of troops in France. Although this controversy,
the so-called Maurice Debate (which took place on May 9), strengthened
Lloyd George temporarily, it also made clear his dependence upon the
Conservatives. Soon afterward, in the summer of 1918, he began to plan
what he expected to be a wartime general election to be entered into in
coalition with the Conservatives. The sudden armistice of Nov. 11, 1918,
however, intervened, and the wartime election became a victory election.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party had withdrawn its support from the coalition
and called upon Labour members to resign. Most, but not all, did.

Between the wars

The election of 1918The general election of Dec. 14, 1918, was a landmark in 20th-century
British history and may have helped to set the course of politics
through the interwar period. To begin, the Representation of the People
Act of 1918, which gave the vote to all men over age 21 and all women
over age 30 and removed the property disqualifications of the older
household franchise, tripled the electorate. Ironically, the election
registered the lowest voter turnout of any election in the 20th century,
reflecting in part the teething troubles of the Labour Party, whose
share of the vote was only 20 percent. Further, 37 seats were added to
the House of Commons. Even though the coalition was returned to office,
the real winners of the election were the Conservatives. Lloyd George’s
Liberals and the Conservatives, who had arranged not to contest seats
against each other, together won 473 of the 707 seats. Liberals loyal to
Lloyd George won 127 seats, while the Asquithian Liberal Party was
nearly wiped out, returning only 36 members as compared with the Labour
Party’s 57. (Similarly, the old Irish Nationalist Party was destroyed
and replaced by Sinn Féin, the party of independence.) Thus, despite the
coalition’s overwhelming victory, Lloyd George remained dependent on the
Conservatives. The Liberal organization in the country was in shambles.
Finally, the election had focused not upon the reconstruction of
Britain, as the leaders of each party had intended, but on the
punishment of Germany after the war, a matter the government had hoped
to defer. The election had committed the British government to a harsh
peace.

Harsh peace and hard timesThe peace treaty with Germany—drawn up far too rapidly and without
German participation, between January and May 1919—went into effect on
June 28. Even as peace with Germany was declared, the British people, as
well as members of the government, were beginning to realize that the
punitive treaty, burdening Germany with the responsibility and much of
the cost of the war, was a mistake. Accordingly, British foreign policy
for much of the decade of the 1920s aimed at rehabilitating Germany and
bringing it back into the family of nations. In general, this attempt
was opposed by France and resulted in a rupture between Britain and its
wartime ally, forcing France into a position of isolation that would
have prodigious consequences for Europe and indeed for the rest of the
world with the rise of Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s.

Lloyd George spent a great deal of time in the four postwar years of
his administration on foreign affairs. As a consequence, issues within
the United Kingdom, such as unemployment, poor housing, Irish
separatism, and the revival of industry, were too frequently neglected.
Many of the promises for reconstruction made in speeches and papers
during the war were never carried out. The government, however, tried to
diminish the habitual confrontation between newly powerful organized
labour and industry. Unemployment insurance was extended to virtually
all workers, and a serious attempt was made to begin a public housing
program. Railroads were reorganized, and for three years after the war
coal mines remained in public hands. This restructuring of industry,
however, came to an end with the serious rise in unemployment that began
in 1920 and culminated in 1921 in a full-scale industrial depression
with nearly one-fourth of the labour force out of work. One of the
factors in the depression was a disastrous coal strike in April 1921,
caused in considerable measure by the collapse of world coal prices
resulting from German coal reparations to France. The immediate effect
of the economic depression was a demand by the Conservatives for
government economy that the prime minister could not ignore.

Ireland and the return of the ConservativesIn 1919 revolutionary disorder broke out in the south of Ireland when
the provisional government of Ireland, organized by the Sinn Féin party,
began guerrilla military operations against the British administration.
Through 1920 the British government attempted to put down violence with
violence, while passing an act allowing Home Rule for both the south of
Ireland and for Ulster. The six Protestant unionist counties of the
north accepted Home Rule and in 1921 set up in Belfast an autonomous
government. In the 26 counties of the south, Home Rule was defiantly
rejected. By the spring of 1921, however, with the Belfast government in
operation and with demands both in Britain and in the rest of the world
that the fighting in Ireland come to an end, compromise became possible.
In the summer a truce was arranged, and on Dec. 6, 1921, after prolonged
negotiations, the British government and the Irish rebels signed a
so-called treaty allowing the establishment of what was, in effect, a
dominion government in Dublin.

Lloyd George’s insistence that the Irish be granted the substance, if
not the letter, of their demands, as well as the clearly declining
popularity of the coalition government, caused general unhappiness, not
among the Conservative leadership but among the members of the
Conservative back bench in the House of Commons. Finally, in October
1922, when the proposal to join forces in a second coalition election
was decisively rejected, largely by the Conservative rank and file, the
Conservative Party withdrew from the coalition. Lloyd George resigned on
October 20, and George V invited the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar
Law, to form a government. On Nov. 15, 1922, the hastily established
Conservative government won a solid victory in a general election. The
decline of the Liberal Party was confirmed by the fact that the two
wings of the party together returned only 116 members of Parliament
compared with Labour’s 142.

The Baldwin eraLaw remained prime minister only until May 20, 1923, when, ill with
cancer, he resigned. He was succeeded by an almost unknown politician,
Stanley Baldwin, who would nonetheless dominate British politics until
his resignation from his third government, in May 1937. Baldwin seemed
an unlikely leader for a major party; he had been in Parliament for 15
years without making a mark. Yet behind the unassuming demeanour was a
crafty politician. Baldwin understood, as perhaps his predecessors had
not, that the British voter, certainly the middle-class voter, desired
not excitement and reform but tranquillity. Nostalgia for the assumed
stability of prewar Britain was strong and indeed a key to the politics
of the 1920s. This frame of mind would contrast sharply with Britain’s
mood after World War II.

The new Conservative government was faced with high unemployment,
industrial stagnation, foreign debts, and continuing demand for economy
in government. Baldwin’s response was to abandon Britain’s historic
policy of free trade and to return to import duties. Although he was
supported in this by a majority of his party, he nonetheless promised to
hold an election on the subject before implementing such a policy.
Consequently, on Dec. 6, 1923, a second election was held in which the
Conservatives lost their comfortable majority; indeed, though they
controlled the largest number of seats (258) in the House of Commons,
the now-united Liberal Party (159) and Labour (191) combined to win a
majority. As a result, on Jan. 22, 1924, the first Labour government in
British history, under Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, came to
power with Liberal support.

MacDonald remained in office only nine months and accomplished little
except the revival of the public housing program abandoned by the Lloyd
George administration under Conservative pressure. During his time in
office he was continually charged in the House of Commons and in the
newspapers with unseemly weakness toward the Bolshevik government of the
Soviet Union and with an unwillingness to deal firmly with purported
revolutionary socialist conspiracies within the United Kingdom. Over
this matter the Liberals finally turned against him, and on Oct. 29,
1924, in an election dominated by charges of Soviet influence, MacDonald
was heavily defeated. Baldwin returned to the prime ministership, backed
by a majority of more than two to one over Labour and the Liberals
combined. The Liberal representation in the House of Commons was reduced
to 40.

Baldwin’s return to office coincided with the French evacuation of
the Ruhr valley in Germany and the revival of Germany as an economic
power. In the nearly five years of the second Baldwin government,
Britain experienced relative economic prosperity, although unemployment
never went below the 10 percent of the working population covered by
unemployment insurance. A new collapse in domestic coal prices, however,
caused by the revival of German coal mining, produced the threat of a
second strike by British coal miners. It erupted in May 1926 with a
walkout in the coal industry and a sympathy strike by the rest of
Britain’s organized labour. Except as a monument in the history of
British labour, however, this so-called general strike is as unimportant
as it was unsuccessful. As a general strike, it lasted only 10 days,
from May 3 to May 12. The miners themselves held out for nearly eight
months and were finally starved into returning as winter began, at lower
wages and with longer hours. Economically, the chief effect of the
strike was to hasten the decay of the huge British coal industry.
However, Baldwin’s handling of it—he prepared emergency services but
then did nothing—greatly increased his popularity; indeed, he is
remembered as a peacemaker, although his government passed an act
declaring general strikes to be revolutionary and hence illegal. Yet
beyond that his administration, particularly the ministry of health
under Neville Chamberlain, accomplished a good deal; it vastly extended
old-age pensions and pensions for widows and orphans, reformed local
government, and, finally, in 1928, extended the franchise to women ages
21 to 30 on the same terms as those for men.

Baldwin dissolved the House of Commons in the spring of 1929,
expecting to be returned. Instead, on May 30 MacDonald’s Labour Party
received 288 seats compared with the Conservative Party’s 260, with the
Liberals again holding the balance of power, with 59 seats. Thus,
MacDonald formed his second government, again with Liberal consent, if
not support. The Liberals could do little else. In 1924 Labour, by its
inaction, had proved itself as a responsible rather than a revolutionary
party. In the minds of Britons, Labour had replaced the Liberals as the
natural alternative party.

Baldwin and the abdication crisisPolitical events in the interwar years must always be seen in the
context of the Great Depression, which set in internationally after the
Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. In Britain, in addition to
disruption to the financial system and the stability of sterling, there
was a rapid acceleration in unemployment from the late 1920s, so that by
the spring of 1931, 25 percent of the workforce was unemployed. The
country was still in the aftermath of economic depression when, in June
1935, Baldwin rather abruptly took over the prime ministership from
MacDonald, whose health was clearly failing. A general election followed
on November 14, in which the Conservatives returned 432 members to
Parliament to Labour’s 154. But because the so-called National Liberals
and a few remaining National Labour members still participated in the
government, it was technically a coalition. With the onset of World War
II in 1939, this election was to be the last British general election
for nearly a decade. Hence, Baldwin, in his final 18 months of office,
presided over the beginnings of Britain’s appeasement policy and over
the more spectacular but less important abdication of the new king,
Edward VIII, who had ascended the throne on Jan. 20, 1936, upon the
death of his father, George V.

In the quarter century since his father’s accession, Edward, as
prince of Wales, had become the most public and best-known heir to the
throne since his grandfather, Edward VII. But, unknown to the British
public, some years before his accession he had fallen in love with an
American, Wallis Simpson, who was then married to a British subject,
Ernest Simpson. Edward decided to marry her, and in 1936, after his
accession, Wallis Simpson began divorce proceedings against her husband.
Baldwin, well before his actual confrontations with the king, had
determined that Edward could not marry Mrs. Simpson and remain monarch.
He warned the king not to attempt to influence public opinion or to try
to remain on the throne. The temper of the people and of Parliament was
against Edward. Eventually, on Dec. 11, 1936, he announced his
abdication in a poignant radio broadcast and left Great Britain. Baldwin
had triumphed. The king was succeeded by his younger brother, who became
George VI and who had an eminently suitable family, including two young
daughters. After George VI’s coronation on May 12, 1937, Baldwin
resigned, amid every sign of popular affection; he was succeeded on May
28 by Neville Chamberlain.

Foreign policy and appeasementChamberlain, rather than Baldwin, has always been regarded as the man of
appeasement. Historically this is correct only in the sense that
Chamberlain formulated a policy of accommodation with Germany and Italy.
But Chamberlain was also the man who began British rearmament,
pronounced appeasement a failure, and declared war upon Germany. Baldwin
was equally zealous to avoid any sort of confrontation with the European
dictators while doing as little as possible to strengthen Britain’s
armed forces.

Adolf Hitler’s accession to power in Germany on Jan. 30, 1933,
occasioned only the slightest interest in Britain. Little was known of
him. It was usually assumed that he was a tool of the right or the army
and in any case would not remain in office long. This illusion began to
shatter in January 1935, when Germany overwhelmingly won a plebiscite in
the Saar River basin; the Saarlanders voted to return their area to
Germany, from which it had been separated by the Treaty of Versailles as
part of German reparations, rather than remaining with France. This was
an enormous boost to Hitler’s prestige, as well as a confirmation of the
attraction of Nazi Germany and, by the same token, a setback for France
and the idea of democracy.

On the wave of popularity the plebiscite brought, Hitler reintroduced
military conscription in Germany and announced the creation of the
Luftwaffe (the German air force), both in violation of the Treaty of
Versailles. In response, the former wartime allies and guarantors of the
peace treaty, Britain, France, and Italy, met at Stresa, Italy, in April
and there discussed collective action to uphold the disarmament terms of
the treaty; this understanding became known as the Stresa Front. Its
maintenance, specifically the challenge of keeping Italy a foe of
Germany, formed the motivation for Britain’s foreign policy for the next
18 months; in effect it was the beginnings of appeasement. In August
1935 Italy attacked the empire of Ethiopia in Africa, announcing that it
had apprised Britain and France at Stresa of its intentions of doing so.
British public opinion was torn between a desire to avoid war and an
unwillingness to sanction unprovoked aggression. The compromise was a
retreat to the fiction of “collective security,” which meant a
dependence upon action by the League of Nations in Geneva. Support for
the League of Nations became the Conservative position on foreign policy
in the general election of November 1935.

Britain at this time remained interested in pursuing friendship with
Italy. Immediately after the election the British foreign secretary, Sir
Samuel Hoare, and the French premier, Pierre Laval, put together a plan
for the rescue of part of Ethiopia that required the cession of certain
areas to Italy. This plan found its way into the press, provoking a
general denunciation of compromise with evil. Hoare had to resign, and
the first attempt at appeasement failed. By the spring of 1936, with the
League of Nations still debating what to do about Italian
aggression—specifically, whether to impose sanctions on oil—resistance
in Ethiopia collapsed. Meanwhile, on March 7, Hitler took advantage of
the disarray in the west and broke the first of the territorial clauses
of the Treaty of Versailles by sending troops into the Rhineland, the
German territory to the west of the Rhine River bordering on Belgium and
The Netherlands.

The Rhineland occupation turned the balance of power in Europe toward
Germany and against the west. Although in Britain there was virtually no
reaction—after all, it was German territory—the effect on France,
particularly on the French army command, was devastating. As a
consequence, France virtually gave up the unilateral direction of its
foreign affairs. Diplomatic initiative rested entirely in London. Now
that it was too late, the 15-year rupture between Britain and France
came to an end.

In July 1936 revolution against the Republican government of Spain
broke out, led by conservative forces within the Spanish army under the
command of Gen. Francisco Franco. It quickly became apparent that the
revolutionaries were supported by Italy and, to a lesser extent,
Germany, not only with money and arms but also with men. The British
reaction, adopted also by the French, was peculiar. Although, according
to public opinion polls begun in 1937, less than 3 percent of the
British population favoured a Francoist victory, British policy was to
forbid the supply of arms to either side. By this policy of
nonintervention the British and the French avoided involvement in war
against Franco and by implication against the Italian government. The
pursuit of friendship with Italy could continue. Meanwhile, the
democratic Spanish government was unable to buy arms from the Western
democracies. Franco eventually triumphed in the spring of 1939. (See
also Spanish Civil War.)

Chamberlain was determined to continue the policy of accommodation
with Italy. He was convinced that at some point it could be reunited
with the Western allies and the Stresa Front could be recreated. Italian
leader Benito Mussolini and officials of his government gave many
private intimations that this might be possible. But at the same time
Chamberlain was determined to pursue a general policy of European
settlement that would include Germany. The prime minister and many
Britons felt that Germany had been badly treated by the Treaty of
Versailles and that the principle of self-determination dictated that
German minorities in other countries should not be prevented from
joining Germany if they clearly chose to do so. Hence, when Germany
overran the Austrian republic in March 1938 and incorporated the small
state into the Reich (see Anschluss), Britain took no action. Similarly,
when almost immediately Hitler began to denounce what he characterized
as the Czech persecutions of the militant German minority in the
Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain searched for a means not to
prevent the Czech borderland from being transferred to Germany but to
ensure that it was accomplished peacefully. Because Czechoslovakia had a
military alliance with France, war would surely result if it resisted
the Germans and called upon French aid.

The attempted settlement of the Sudeten crisis, culminating in the
Munich Agreement, was the climax of the appeasement policy. Between
Sept. 15 and 30, 1938, Chamberlain traveled to Germany three times to
meet Hitler. From the last meeting, held at Munich on September 30, he
took back what he believed to be an agreement that the German portions
of Czechoslovakia constituted Hitler’s last territorial claim in Europe
and that Germany, as well as Britain, would renounce war as a means of
settling international claims. He had, he said with some pride, brought
“peace for our time.”

Chamberlain’s policy failed because he believed that Hitler sincerely
aimed only at reuniting Germans, whereas in fact Hitler’s appetite for
territory, particularly to the east, was unlimited. On March 15, 1939,
the German army, virtually without warning, occupied the rest of
Czechoslovakia, even though it was not inhabited by Germans. On March 18
Chamberlain, distinctly angry, made an announcement that amounted to the
end of appeasement; in the following weeks Britain offered a guarantee
of Polish territory (where Hitler would clearly be looking next), signed
a military alliance with Poland, and undertook serious preparation for
war, including the first peacetime military conscription.

World War II

The Polish crisis precipitated the war. Through the summer of 1939,
German propaganda grew more strident, demanding cession to Germany of
the city of Gdańsk (Danzig) while gradually escalating demands for
special rights in, and finally annexation of, the Polish corridor.
Because the only country able to defend Poland was the Soviet Union, a
British-French mission in the summer of 1939 began negotiations for a
treaty with Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin. Poland, however, announced that
it would not allow Soviet troops to enter Polish territory, even for the
purpose of defending the country against Germany. Hitler put a stop to
these negotiations on August 23 when he announced the German-Soviet
Nonaggression Pact. On September 1 German troops invaded Poland. Britain
and France declared war on Germany on September 3.

The phases of warFrom the British perspective, World War II fell readily into three
distinct phases. The first, the so-called phony war and the period of
German victories in the west, ended with the decision of France on June
18, 1940, to ask for an armistice with Germany. The second, heroic
phase, when Britain stood alone, began with the battle for survival in
the air over the British Isles and ended in the first week of December
1941 with the successful Soviet defense of Moscow after Hitler’s attack
on June 22 and with the Japanese declaration of war on the United States
and the British Empire on December 7. Then followed what Churchill
termed the period of the Grand Alliance, lasting from December 1941
until Germany’s capitulation in May 1945.

Perhaps the most important event of the first phase was the
announcement on Sept. 3, 1939, that Churchill, assumed to have reached
the end of his career in 1936 as a result of his having embraced the
king’s cause during the abdication crisis, would reenter the government
as first lord of the admiralty. Churchill thus was in charge of the
Royal Navy on April 9 and 10, 1940, when Hitler without warning overran
Denmark and Norway, greatly extending his northern flank and virtually
destroying the naval blockade of Germany that had been established at
the beginning of the war.

The Norwegian campaign destroyed the Chamberlain government. The
obviously poor planning and the incapacity of the British forces in an
area where the Germans were at a serious disadvantage caused a rebellion
within the Conservative Party. A bitter debate lasting from May 7 to May
9, 1940, resulted in Chamberlain’s resignation the next day. Although
Churchill himself, as first lord of the admiralty, was heavily involved
and did not attempt to deny his responsibility, Chamberlain quickly
discovered that the coalition government he hoped to establish with
either himself or Lord Halifax as prime minister could, at the
insistence of the Labour Party, be headed only by Churchill. Thus, on
May 10 Churchill was announced as prime minister. Chamberlain, to his
immense credit, consented to remain in the cabinet and to control, on
Churchill’s behalf, the Conservative Party.

On the same day, May 10, 1940, the German army struck in the west
against The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. France held out for
just 38 days. (Listen to an excerpt of Churchill’s first address to the
House of Commons as prime minister, on May 13, 1940.) When on June 18
the French government resolved to ask for an armistice, Churchill
announced on the radio that Britain would fight on alone; it would be
the nation’s “finest hour.” So began the second phase of World War II
for Britain. Through August and September 1940 Britain’s fate depended
upon 800 fighter airplanes and upon Churchill’s resolution during the
terrific bombardment that became the Battle of Britain. In the last six
months of 1940, some 23,000 civilians were killed, and yet the country
held on. (For contemporary descriptions of the devastation of London,
see BTW: London Classics: London in World War II.)

Perhaps the important political lesson of World War II lay in the
realization that a democratic country, with a centuries-old tradition of
individual liberty, could with popular consent be mobilized for a
gigantic national effort. The compulsory employment of labour became
universal for both men and women. In 1943 Britain was devoting 54
percent of its gross national product to the war. Medical services were
vastly extended. Civilian consumption was reduced to 80 percent of the
prewar level. Yet by and large the political tensions that had
accompanied an equally desperate war 25 years before did not appear.
Politics, as opposed to the direction of the war, certainly for the
voters, became almost irrelevant. There was some parliamentary criticism
of Churchill’s leadership, but public approval, at least as measured by
repeated opinion polls, hardly wavered. Nonetheless, the idea of a
‘‘united’’ country was overplayed then, and, in the eyes of some, has
been overplayed since. The old divisions of class and gender were never
far below the surface, and it is only with considerable qualification
that World War II can be called the People’s War.

Political developmentsGerman hostilities in the west ended at midnight on May 8, 1945. Six
months earlier Churchill had promised in the House of Commons that he
would ask the king to dissolve the sitting Parliament, elected in 1935,
soon after the German surrender unless the Labour and Liberal parties
seriously desired to continue the coalition government. Accordingly, he
began conversations with Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party,
in the middle of May, proposing that Labour remain in the coalition
until Japan surrendered, an event he estimated to be at least 18 months
away. Churchill believed Attlee to have been initially sympathetic, but
other members of the Labour Party pressed for departure. As a result,
Churchill dissolved the government on May 23, appointed a new,
single-party Conservative government, and set election day for July 5.
Because it was necessary to count the military vote, the results could
not be announced until July 26.

Considering that the leading figures in each party had been cabinet
colleagues only a few weeks before, the electoral campaign was
remarkably bitter. Largely on the advice of William Maxwell Aitken,
Baron Beaverbrook, the Conservatives focused chiefly on Churchill
himself as the man who had won the war. Churchill denounced Labour as
the party of socialism and perhaps of totalitarianism while promising
strong leadership and grand but unspecific measures of social reform.
Labour, even though the war in the Pacific continued, concentrated on
peacetime reconstruction and fair shares for all.

Quite clearly, Churchill’s rhetoric and his attacks on former
comrades angered many voters. But the mood in the country that gave
Labour its overwhelming victory was obviously determined by the
recollection of the hardships of the 1920s and ’30s; Britons voted
against Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. In the end Labour won
393 seats, almost double the Conservative total of 213 and far more than
it had expected. On July 26, 1945, as soon as the results were clear,
Churchill resigned and Attlee became prime minister.

Britain since 1945

Labour and the welfare state (1945–51)

Labour rejoiced at its political triumph, the first independent
parliamentary majority in the party’s history, but it faced grave
problems. The war had stripped Britain of virtually all its foreign
financial resources, and the country had built up “sterling
credits”—debts owed to other countries that would have to be paid in
foreign currencies—amounting to several billion pounds. Moreover, the
economy was in disarray. Some industries, such as aircraft manufacture,
were far larger than was now needed, while others, such as railways and
coal mines, were desperately short of new equipment and in bad repair.
With nothing to export, Britain had no way to pay for imports or even
for food. To make matters worse, within a few weeks of the surrender of
Japan, on Sept. 2, 1945, U.S. President Harry S. Truman, as he was
required to do by law, ended lend-lease, upon which Britain had depended
for its necessities as well as its arms. John Maynard Keynes, as his
last service to Great Britain, had to negotiate a $3.75 billion loan
from the United States and a smaller one from Canada. In international
terms, Britain was bankrupt.

Labour, nonetheless, set about enacting the measures that in some
cases had been its program since the beginning of the century.
Nationalization of railroads and coal mines, which were in any case so
run down that any government would have had to bring them under state
control, and of the Bank of England began immediately. In addition, road
transport, docks and harbours, and the production of electrical power
were nationalized. There was little debate. The Conservatives could
hardly argue that any of these industries, barring electric power, was
flourishing or that they could have done much differently.

More debate came over Labour’s social welfare legislation, which
created the “welfare state.” Labour enacted a comprehensive program of
national insurance, based upon the Beveridge Report (prepared by
economist William Beveridge and advocating state action to control
unemployment, along with the introduction of free health insurance and
contributory social insurance) but differing from it in important ways.
It regularized the de facto nationalization of public assistance, the
old Poor Law, in the National Assistance Act of 1946, and in its most
controversial move it established the gigantic framework of the National
Health Service, which provided free comprehensive medical care for every
citizen, rich or poor. The pugnacious temper of the minister of health,
Aneurin Bevan, and the insistence of radical elements in the Labour
Party upon the nationalization of all hospitals provoked the only
serious debate accompanying the enactment of this immense legislative
program, most of which went into force within two years of Labour’s
accession to office. Bevan emerged at this time as an important figure
on the Labour left and would remain its leader until his death in 1960.

Economic crisis and relief (1947)Labour’s record in its first 18 months of office was distinguished. In
terms of sheer legislative bulk, the government accomplished more than
any other government in the 20th century save perhaps Asquith’s
pre-World War I administration or the administration of Margaret
Thatcher (1979–90). Yet by 1947 it had been overtaken by the economic
crisis, which had not abated. The loan from the United States that was
supposed to last four years was nearly gone. Imports were cut to the
bone. Bread, never rationed during the war, had to be controlled.
Britain had to withdraw support from Greece and Turkey, reversing a
policy more than a century old, and call upon the United States to take
its place. Thus, at Britain’s initiative, the Truman Doctrine came into
existence.

Relief came with U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s
announcement that the United States would undertake a massive program of
financial aid to the European continent. Any country in the Eastern or
Western bloc was entitled to take part. Although the Soviet Union
immediately denounced the Marshall Plan as the beginning of a division
between the East and the West, all western European countries, including
Britain, hastened to participate. It can be argued that the Marshall
Plan and the Truman Doctrine represent the permanent involvement of the
United States in Europe.

Withdrawal from the empire Britain, not entirely by coincidence, was also beginning its withdrawal
from the empire. Most insistent in its demand for self-government was
India. The Indian independence movement had come of age during World War
I and had gained momentum with the Massacre of Amritsar of 1919. The
All-India Congress Party, headed by Mohandas K. Gandhi, evoked sympathy
throughout the world with its policy of nonviolent resistance, forcing
Baldwin’s government in the late 1920s to seek compromise. The eventual
solution, embodied in the Government of India Act of 1935, provided
responsible government for the Indian provinces, the Indianization of
the civil service, and an Indian parliament, but it made clear that the
Westminster Parliament would continue to legislate for the subcontinent.
The act pleased no one, neither the Indians, the Labour Party, which
considered it a weak compromise, nor a substantial section of the
Conservative Party headed by Churchill, which thought it went too far.
Agitation in India continued.

Further British compromise became inevitable when the Japanese in the
spring of 1942 swept through Burma to the eastern borders of India while
also organizing in Singapore a large Indian National Army and issuing
appeals to Asian nationalism. During the war, Churchill reluctantly
offered increasing installments of independence amounting to dominion
status in return for all-out Indian support for the conflict. These
offers were rejected by both the Muslim minority and the Hindu majority.

The election of a Labour government at the end of World War II
coincided with the rise of sectarian strife within India. The new
administration determined with unduly urgent haste that Britain would
have to leave India. This decision was announced on June 3, 1947, and
British administration in India ended 10 weeks later, on August 15.
Burma (now Myanmar) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) received independence by
early 1948. Britain, in effect, had no choice but to withdraw from
colonial territories it no longer had the military and economic power to
control.

The same circumstances that dictated the withdrawal from India
required, at almost the same time, the termination of the mandate in
Trans-Jordan, the evacuation of all of Egypt except the Suez Canal
territory, and in 1948 the withdrawal from Palestine, which coincided
with the proclamation of the State of Israel. It has been argued that
the orderly and dignified ending of the British Empire, beginning in the
1940s and stretching into the 1960s, was Britain’s greatest
international achievement. However, like the notion of national unity
during World War II, this interpretation can also be seen largely as a
myth produced by politicians and the press at the time and perpetuated
since. The ending of empire was calculated upon the basis of Britain’s
interests rather than those of its colonies. National interest was
framed in terms of the postwar situation—that is, of an economically
exhausted, dependent Britain, now increasingly caught up in the
international politics of the Cold War. What later became known as
‘‘decolonization’’ was very often shortsighted, self-interested, and not
infrequently bloody, as was especially the case in Malaysia (where the
politics of anticommunism played a central role) and in Kenya.

Conservative government (1951–64)

The last years of Attlee’s administration were troubled by economic
stringency and inflation. The pound was sharply devalued in 1949, and a
general election on Feb. 23, 1950, reduced Labour’s majority over the
Conservative and Liberal parties to only eight seats. Attlee himself was
in poor health, and Ernest Bevin, formerly the most politically powerful
man in the cabinet, had died. More-radical members of the party, led by
Aneurin Bevan, were growing impatient with the increasingly moderate
temper of the leadership. On Oct. 25, 1951, a second general election in
a House of Commons not yet two years old returned the Conservatives
under Churchill to power with a majority of 22 seats.

The Conservatives remained in power for the next 13 years, from
October 1951 until October 1964, first under Churchill—who presided over
the accession of the new monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, on Feb. 6, 1952,
but was forced to resign on account of age and health on April 5,
1955—and then under Churchill’s longtime lieutenant and foreign
secretary, Anthony Eden. Eden resigned in January 1957, partly because
of ill health but chiefly because of his failed attempt to roll back the
retreat from empire by a reoccupation of the Suez Canal Zone after the
nationalization of the canal by the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel
Nasser, in the summer of 1956. This belated experiment in imperial
adventure drew wide criticism from the United States, the British
dominions, and indeed within Britain itself. Although it was cut short
in December 1956, when UN emergency units supplanted British (and
French) troops, the Suez intervention divided British politics as few
foreign issues have done since. Eden was succeeded by his chancellor of
the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan. Macmillan remained in office until
October 1963, when he too retired because of ill health, to be succeeded
by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, then foreign secretary. In this period of
single-party government, the themes were economic change and the
continued retreat from colonialism.

Labour interlude (1964–70)

The long Conservative tenure came to an end on Oct. 16, 1964, with the
appointment of a Labour administration headed by Harold Wilson, who had
been Labour leader only a little more than a year and a half—since the
death of the widely admired Hugh Gaitskell. Gaitskell and prominent
Conservative R.A. Butler had been the principal figures in the politics
of moderation known as ‘‘Butskellism’’ (derived by combining their last
names), a slightly left-of-centre consensus predicated on the
recognition of the power of trade unionism, the importance of addressing
the needs of the working class, and the necessity of collaboration
between social classes. Although Wilson was thought to be a Labour
radical and had attracted a substantial party following on this account,
he was in fact a moderate. His government inherited the problems that
had accumulated during the long period of Conservative prosperity: poor
labour productivity, a shaky pound, and trade union unrest. His
prescription for improvement included not only a widely heralded
economic development plan, to be pursued with the introduction of the
most modern technology, but also stern and unpopular controls on
imports, the devaluation of the pound, wage restraint, and an attempt,
in the event these measures proved unsuccessful, to reduce the power of
the trade unions. Eventually the Wilson government became unpopular and
was kept in power primarily by weakness and division in the Conservative
Party. Finally, in 1968, Wilson was confronted with an outbreak of civil
rights agitation in Northern Ireland that quickly degenerated into armed
violence.

The return of the Conservatives (1970–74)

The Conservatives returned in a general election on June 18, 1970, with
a majority of 32. The new prime minister, Edward Heath, set three goals:
to take Britain into the European Economic Community (EEC; now the
European Community, embedded in the European Union), to restore economic
growth, and to break the power of the trade unions. In his short term in
office he succeeded only in negotiating Britain’s entry into the EEC, in
1973. In fact, Heath was defeated by the trade unions, which simply
boycotted his industrial legislation, and by the Arab oil embargo, which
began in 1973 and which made a national coal miners’ strike in the
winter of 1973–74 particularly effective. Heath used the strongest
weapon available to a prime minister—a general election, on Feb. 28,
1974—to settle the issue of who governed Britain. The election, held
when factories were in operation only three days a week and civilian
Britain was periodically reduced to candlelight, was a repudiation of
the policy of confrontation with labour.

Labour back in power (1974–79)

Despite losing by more than 200,000 votes to the Conservatives, Labour
and Wilson returned as a minority government and promptly made peace by
granting the miners’ demands. Wilson’s policies were confirmed on Oct.
10, 1974, in a second election, when his tiny majority, based upon
cooperation from the Scottish National Party and the Plaid Cymru (Welsh
Nationalist Party) as well as the Liberals, was increased to an almost
workable margin of 20. The Labour government faced severe economic
challenges—including post-World War II record levels of unemployment and
inflation—yet Wilson was able to renegotiate British membership in the
EEC, which was confirmed in a referendum in April 1975. However, neither
Wilson nor James Callaghan, who succeeded him on April 5, 1976, was able
to come to terms with the labour unions, which were as willing to
embarrass a Labour government as a Conservative one. Labour’s
parliamentary position was precarious, and the party lost its governing
majority through a series of by-election defeats and defections. Labour
survived through what became known as the “Lib-Lab Pact,” an agreement
between Callaghan and Liberal Party leader David Steel, which lasted
until August 1978. Union unrest, induced by rapidly increasing prices,
made the late 1970s a period of almost endless industrial conflict,
culminating at the end of 1978 in the “Winter of Discontent,” a series
of bitter disputes, which the government seemed unable to control and
which angered the voters. Meanwhile, Labour’s slender majority in the
House of Commons eroded with the defection of the Liberal and
nationalist parties following the defeat of referenda in Wales and
Scotland that would have created devolved assemblies. On March 28, 1979,
Callaghan was forced from office after losing a vote of confidence in
the House of Commons by a single vote (310–311), the first such
dismissal of a prime minister since MacDonald in 1924.

Bentley Brinkerhoff Gilbert
Patrick Joyce

Thatcherism (1979–90)

In the subsequent election, in May 1979, the Conservatives under the
leadership of Margaret Thatcher were swept into power with the largest
electoral swing since 1945, securing a 43-seat majority. After an
extremely shaky start to her administration, Thatcher achieved
popularity by sending the armed forces to expel an Argentine force from
the Falkland Islands (see Falkland Islands War) in the spring of 1982,
on the strength of which she won triumphant reelection in June 1983, her
party capturing nearly 400 seats in the House of Commons and a 144-seat
majority. The opposition Labour Party suffered its worst performance
since 1918, winning only 27.6 percent of the vote—only 2.2 percent more
than an alliance of the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party, a
party formed by Labour defectors.

Riding this wave of success, the Thatcher government proceeded with a
thoroughgoing privatization of the economy, most notably the railway
system. Like the accompanying deindustrialization of what had been a
manufacturing Britain, this transformation of the transportation
infrastructure had immense consequences, resulting in a public transport
system that was widely perceived as chaotic and inefficient, as well as
in a great increase in private automobile use and in road building.
Thatcher’s advocacy of what eventually became known as neoliberalism was
in fact part of a similar international response to changes in the
global economy driven by the United States during the presidency of
Ronald Reagan (predicated on the free market and supply-side economics),
with whom Thatcher formed a strong personal alliance.
Deindustrialization and privatization began to change the face of
Britain, one fairly immediate outcome being mass unemployment.

Partly in response to this development but also prompted by
long-simmering tensions, a series of disturbances broke out in British
cities in 1981, particularly in Liverpool and London, when an
endemically unprivileged young black urban population turned its sense
of alienation from much of British society against the police. Since the
Notting Hill race riots of 1958 in London, the integration of the
immigrant West Indian community into British society had been a major
problem. This problem worsened with the arrival, beginning in the 1960s,
of South Asian immigrants from East Africa and the Indian subcontinent,
who, like the Caribbean population, were highly concentrated in
particular areas of the country and of cities. Elements in the
Conservative Party, led by Enoch Powell, were not averse to creating
political capital out of this situation, though Powell’s English
patriotism was more complex than most Conservative gut reactions. His
liberal economics, along with the advocacy of the free market by Keith
Joseph, was very influential on the party, especially on Thatcher.
Despite promises to alleviate the urban poverty of immigrant
communities, little was done in the 1980s, and in the 1990s the
exclusion of blacks and to a lesser extent South Asians from an equal
share in the benefits of British society continued to be a critical
problem, one which politicians confronted reluctantly and to limited
effect.

This was evident earlier in the very limited nature of the Race
Relations Act of 1965, itself fiercely opposed by the Conservatives. A
subsequent amendment, in 1968, outlawed discrimination in areas such as
employment and the provision of goods and services. However, it was not
until the Race Relations Act of 1976 that any real change was evident.
This act made both direct and indirect discrimination an offense and
provided legal redress for those discriminated against through
employment tribunals and the courts. Yet another amendment to the act,
in 2001, included public bodies, particularly local authorities and the
police, whose role in black communities continued to be a considerable
source of tension. This unease was compounded by endemic inequality and
deprivation in ethnic (especially Asian) communities. In 2001 the result
was a wave of public disturbances across the north of England, in which
disaffected youth once again played a leading role. In Britain, in the
aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States, the advent
of the so-called ‘‘war on terror’’ served to deepen existing divisions
by giving ‘‘racial’’ tensions a new form, that of ‘‘Islamophobia.’’

A considerable degree of reluctance also characterized the other
great problem of the Thatcher administrations, namely the conflict in
Northern Ireland. Since 1945 successive British governments failed to
address discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland. The
international civil rights current of the late 1960s triggered a new and
intensive wave of protest in Northern Ireland, which was met by a
continuing reluctance to reform and by police overreaction. Into this
increasingly explosive situation stepped the Provisional Irish
Republican Army (IRA), which had separated from the long-established
‘‘Official’’ IRA in 1969 and which gained support after 13 Roman
Catholic civil rights demonstrators were killed by British troops in
Londonderry on Jan. 30, 1972, an event that became known as Bloody
Sunday. The IRA mounted an increasingly violent campaign against the
British Army in Ulster, taking their activity to the British mainland
with increasing effect in the 1970s. The so-called ‘‘Troubles’’ ensued
for the better part of three decades, with the British Army and the IRA
fighting to a vicious draw in the end. The Troubles also took the form
of sectarian strife in Northern Ireland, polarizing the Protestant and
Catholic communities, each of which had its own paramilitary
organizations. The IRA “hunger strikers” of the early 1980s failed to
move Thatcher, a resistance that probably ultimately harmed her by
producing great sympathy for the republican cause in Northern Ireland.
Nor did she appear to be moved by the bombing at the Conservative Party
conference in Brighton in 1984, an attempt on her own life that resulted
in the deaths of several of her friends and colleagues within the party.
Nonetheless, even at this parlous time, unofficial and secret contacts
were being established with the IRA. These led to the very long and
tortuous process of negotiation that eventually became known as the
‘‘peace process.’’

Despite being unable to resolve the Irish problem, Thatcher succeeded
in 1987 in winning an unprecedented third general election, and in
January 1988 she surpassed Asquith as the longest continually serving
prime minister since Lord Liverpool (1812–27). Thatcher’s electoral
success came from her extraordinary capacity for leadership and the
development of ‘‘Thatcherism.” Responding to widespread disillusionment
with Labour government and the state, Thatcher was able to tap into, and
give leadership to, a politics of freedom and choice that expressed the
desires of many people in the 1980s. In the wake of the debacle that the
1970s had been for the political left and trade union movement,
Thatcherism’s variant of contemporary free-market neoliberalism gained
increasing momentum. It effectively ended the postwar accommodation
sometimes referred to as the corporate state, through which government,
the unions, and business enabled a form of state-managed capitalism to
develop. In its movement away from that accord, Britain foreshadowed
developments in central and eastern Europe after the demise of communism
there in 1989.

Thatcher’s premiership, however, did not survive her third term. She
alienated even fellow Conservatives with her insistence on replacing
local property taxes with a uniform poll tax and with her unwillingness
to fully integrate the pound into a common European currency. By the end
of 1989, voter discontent was manifest in by-elections, and in November
1990 Thatcher faced serious opposition for the first time in the
Conservative party’s annual vote for selection of a leader. When she did
not receive the required majority, she withdrew, and John Major, the
chancellor of the Exchequer since October 1989, was chosen on November
27. Thatcher resigned as prime minister the following day and was
replaced by Major.

John Major (1990–97)

Despite having presided over the country’s longest recession since the
1930s and owing partly to the Labour Party’s overconfidence, the
Conservatives won their fourth consecutive election in April 1992,
albeit with a diminished majority of 21 in Parliament. That they did so
was largely a result of the ongoing conflict within Labour as it
continued to undergo ‘‘modernization.’’ As the recession lingered, the
popularity of Major—and of the Conservatives—plummeted, and the party
fared poorly in by-elections and in local elections. Major’s economic
policies were questioned after the ‘‘Black Wednesday’’ fiasco of Sept.
16, 1992, when he was forced to withdraw Britain from the European
exchange-rate mechanism and devalue the pound. Despite having pledged
not to increase taxes during the 1992 campaign, Major supported a series
of increases to restore Britain’s financial equilibrium. When he sought
to secure passage of the Treaty on European Union in 1993, his grip on
power was challenged. Twenty-three Conservatives voted against a
government resolution on the treaty, causing the government’s defeat and
compelling Major to call a vote of confidence to pass the treaty. Tory
troubles mounted with scandals in local governments, particularly in
Westminster in 1994, and thereafter Major was seemingly unable to shake
off the growing reputation of his government not only for economic
mismanagement but also for corruption and moral hypocrisy. A seemingly
unending series of financial and sexual scandals took their toll, and
paper offensives like Major’s “Citizens Charter,” attempting to stop the
growing rot of concern about the efficiency and responsibility of
privatized industry by laying down citizens’ rights, made little impact.

As criticism of his leadership mounted within the Conservative Party,
Major resigned as party leader in June 1995. In the ensuing leadership
election, Major solidified his position—though 89 Conservative members
of Parliament voted for his opponent and 22 others abstained or spoiled
their ballots. Major’s government was also severely criticized for its
handling of the crisis involving ‘‘mad cow disease,’’ in which it was
discovered that large numbers of cattle in the human food supply in
Britain were infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Facing a
rejuvenated Labour Party under the leadership of Tony Blair, the
Conservatives suffered a crushing defeat in the general election of
1997, winning only 165 seats, their fewest since 1906. Labour’s 419
seats and its 179-seat majority were its largest in British history.

New Labour and after (since 1997)

During its years out of power, the Labour Party had undergone a gradual
transformation as it attempted to distance itself from the power of the
unions on the one hand and the power of the membership on the other, in
the guise of the traditional role of the Labour Party Conference. This
process had been started before 1992 by Neil Kinnock, who led the party
from 1983 to 1992, and it was continued by his successors, first John
Smith and then Blair. The need for fundamental reappraisal had been
urged as early as 1981, with the founding of the Social Democratic
Party, when prominent Labour Party politicians, led by Roy Jenkins,
seceded from the party in an attempt to “break the mould” of British
politics. Divisions not only between the right and left in the party but
also within the left of the party itself added to the chaos that was the
British left in the 1980s; the insistence of the radical leftist and
former Labour minister Tony Benn on running against the former Labour
chancellor Denis Healey in the party election for deputy leadership in
1981 effectively split the radical democratic left and disabled the
possibility of an early riposte to Thatcher. It also, ironically enough,
contributed to what became known as ‘‘New Labour,’’ rather than a more
left-wing variant of labourism eventually replacing the Conservatives.

The understanding that the party would have to rethink the market
(not only in economic but in social terms), embracing it in a way
foreign to many of the unions and the traditional Labour left, grew
increasingly after 1992, until, after the Labour victory of 1997, there
was a clearly marked path for New Labour. The most symbolically
important marker of the change from Old to New Labour was the repeal of
the party’s Clause IV, engineered by Blair in 1995. The replacement of
old Clause IV, which had committed the party to the ‘‘common ownership
of the means of production,’’ ended almost 80 years of dedication to
that goal. The new path of the party was to be a middle one, in the
phraseology of New Labour, a “third way,’’ supposedly embracing both
social justice and the market. Not only in rhetoric but in reality,
“new” Labour was to be different from “old.” There was also to be
increasing attention to the importance of the media, an attention that
the Tories had developed into something of a fine art under Thatcher,
with her press secretary Bernard Ingham. Given the increasing role of
the media in the presentation of politics and indeed the almost
wholesale integration of political substance and political style through
the media, this mastery of the art of “spin” was to become a political
necessity. Therefore, art for art’s sake (spin for spin’s sake) was to
become a feature of Labour government after 1997. This approach was
ultimately to rebound upon the party and, indeed, upon the political
process in general during the next decade with the emergence of
widespread disillusionment with politics in British society, especially
among young people.

Labour’s landslide victory in 1997, which undoubtedly benefited from
the inspirational leadership Blair seemed to offer, nevertheless may
have been less the result of an unbounded belief in New Labour than of
the discrediting of the Conservative Party. It is certain that Blair was
helped into power by the parlous state into which the Conservative Party
had fallen under Major after 1992. Promising that “we ran for office as
New Labour, and we shall govern as New Labour,’’ the Blair government in
fact began in a rather conservative fashion, by accepting existing
government spending limitations. Nonetheless, the difficult and what
came to be the increasingly troubled task of combining aspects of
Thatcherism with the idea of a ‘‘social market” gathered momentum.
Certainly, through much of Blair’s tenure a buoyant economy, well
managed by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, did a great deal to
ease the passage of New Labour and the third way. In his first major
initiative and one of his boldest moves, Blair, abetted by Brown,
granted the Bank of England the power to determine interest-rate policy
without government consultation. This was a major move in the
disengagement of financial markets from the state.

Blair’s government was also more and more taken up with the question
of whether Britain should stay in or remain outside the European
monetary union. At stake were fundamental ideas about British
sovereignty and whether, in a progressively globalized world in which
some claimed that the individual nation-state was becoming unviable,
sovereignty in its existing forms could remain intact. For the
Conservative Party, ever more hostile to the European Union, this
question was central to its attempts to fight back against the Labour
Party. Blair’s government did sign the Treaty on European Union’s Social
Chapter—which sought to harmonize European social policies on issues
such as working conditions, equality in the workplace, and worker health
and safety—despite Major’s earlier negotiation of an ‘‘opt out’’
mechanism to placate the treaty’s Conservative opponents. However, the
Labour Party’s implementation of the Social Chapter was at best
halfhearted, and its goal became to influence as much as possible the
European Union itself to moderate the operations of the chapter. As with
financial deregulation, the emphasis in labour affairs was on the
market.

Conspicuous progress was also made in solving the problem of Northern
Ireland. Under Major, in 1994, the IRA declared a cease-fire, the
Protestant paramilitaries followed suit soon after, and talks between
the British government, the Irish government, and Sinn Féin began. The
IRA cease-fire secured a long and involved series of negotiations, in
which the Belfast Agreement of 1998 (also known as the Good Friday
Agreement) seemed to have at last brought peace to Northern Ireland.
Unionist suspicion and concern about fundamental reforms to the
traditional power structure of the province meant, however, that the
implementation of the agreement became a tortuous business. Indeed, it
took almost another decade to arrive at what looked like a final
resolution, when in 2007 the Northern Ireland Assembly was restored on
the basis of power sharing between what had erstwhile been bitter
enemies, Sinn Féin and the Ian Paisley-led Democratic Unionist Party.

In May 1998 voters in London overwhelmingly approved the government’s
plan for a new assembly for the city and for its first directly elected
mayor, resulting in the capital’s first citywide government since the
abolition of the Greater London Council by Thatcher in 1986. However,
the precedent of an elected mayor in London was not subsequently
followed by similar action in other major British cities. In the late
1990s the Labour government also carried out several other
constitutional reforms. The House of Lords, previously dominated by
hereditary peers (nobles), was reconstituted as an assembly composed
primarily of appointive life peers, with only limited representation of
hereditary peers. Nonetheless, the striking contradiction of an
unelected legislative assembly in a country that prided itself on its
traditions of liberal democracy was apparent. Following referenda in
Wales and Scotland, the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish
Parliament were established in 1999 and granted powers previously
reserved for the central government. Yet, with the exception of
political devolution to the component states of the United Kingdom, the
Labour Party remained reluctant to reform the constitution, so that at
the beginning of the 21st century it was still the revered mysteries of
the uncodified British constitution by which the British were governed.

The 1990s were a period of transition and controversy for the
monarchy. In 1992, during what Queen Elizabeth II referred to as the
royal family’s annus horribilis, Charles, prince of Wales, heir to the
British throne, and his wife, Diana, princess of Wales, separated, as
did Elizabeth’s son Andrew, duke of York, and his wife, Sarah, duchess
of York. Moreover, Elizabeth’s daughter, Anne, divorced, and a fire
gutted the royal residence of Windsor Castle. After details of
extramarital affairs by Charles and Diana surfaced and the couple
divorced, observers openly questioned Charles’s fitness to succeed his
mother as sovereign, and public support for the monarchy ebbed. The
immensely popular Diana (dubbed the ‘‘People’s Princess’’) died in an
automobile accident in Paris in 1997, prompting an outpouring of grief,
or at least hysteria, throughout the world. The British royal family
came under scrutiny for its handling of the matter—especially the
queen’s reluctance, because of tradition, to allow the national flag to
fly at half-staff over Buckingham Palace. With the queen celebrating her
50th wedding anniversary, the queen mother, Elizabeth, celebrating her
100th birthday, and Charles working hard to improve his public image,
the fortunes of the monarchy improved by the end of the 1990s.
Nevertheless, the established institutions of the British state had been
called into question in an unprecedented way. If the popularity of the
monarchy survived, it was largely the result of the queen’s persona; the
royal family as a whole—itself the idealized media creation of late
Victorian times—frequently had become the object of ridicule. The
transformation of the monarchy was indeed emblematic of the very
unevenly progressing severance of the British from the long-lived
institutions and culture of the 19th century. To celebrate the new
millennium, the monumental Millennium Dome, the largest structure of its
kind in the world, and the Millennium Bridge were opened in London. It
was perhaps symbolic of the contradictions of this modernity that the
dome was dogged by controversy regarding its cost and design and the
bridge by the fiasco of its opening, when it was found to move
alarmingly above the waters of the Thames when in public use.

In June 2001 Blair’s government was reelected with a 167-seat
majority in the House of Commons—the largest majority ever won by a
second-term British government. With the question of European
integration continuing to be of great significance in British politics,
the new Labour administration chose not to adopt the common European
currency, the euro, partly because of a fear of popular response.
However, it was on the Conservative side that Britain’s relationship
with Europe was most urgently a party issue. It continued to divide a
party riven by differences, a party that looked more and more like the
Labour Party of the 1980s and early ’90s. Indeed, there is a direct
parallel between the recent histories of the two parties: the
traditional left of the Labour Party corresponded to the traditional
right of the Conservative Party, as both fought hard to stem the tide of
party modernization. The battle for the soul of the Conservative Party
was joined with growing fervour with the election of David Cameron in
December 2005 as its modernizing leader. His subsequent attempt to steer
the party back to the political centre, and away from the old order of
the Thatcherite legacy, was every bit as difficult as the redirection
undertaken by Labour modernizers. In addition to Europe and economic
policy, the issue of increased levels of immigration into Britain after
2000 further divided the Conservatives.

Indeed, Britain as a whole became divided on this issue. Large bodies
of opinion, stirred up by xenophobia in the popular press, responded
with fear and anxiety to increased levels of immigration from central
and eastern Europe that were a consequence of European integration. In a
more globalized and war-ridden world, the burgeoning flow of asylum
seekers into Britain added to this climate, as did the ‘‘war on
terror.’’ Asian Muslims, many of them long-standing British citizens and
British-born, were nonetheless frequently lumped with immigrants and
asylum seekers as part of an undifferentiated external threat to
Britishness.

Following the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001,
global terrorism dominated the political agenda in Britain, and Blair
closely allied himself with the administration of U.S. Pres. George W.
Bush. Britain contributed troops to the military effort to oust
Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, which was charged with harbouring Osama
bin Laden, who had founded al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization linked
to the September 11 attacks. Although Blair received strong support for
his antiterrorist strategy from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats
in the House of Commons, a small minority of Labour members of
Parliament opposed military action. The Blair government also faced a
slowing economy and a widespread perception that public services such as
health, education, and transportation had not improved. Although large
amounts of public money had been spent, particularly on the health
service, much of this went into elaborating the new and highly evolved
structures of management that came to characterize Labour administration
of the state. However, it was the subject of the Iraq War, and Britain’s
support for the U.S. position on it, that did most to undermine the
standing of Blair.

From late 2002, politics in Britain was dominated by Blair’s decision
to support military action to oust from power the Iraqi government of
ṢaddāmḤussein, which was alleged to either possess or be developing
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that might either be used against
Iraq’s neighbours or find their way into the hands of international
terrorists. Notwithstanding widespread and enormous public protests
against war, the resignation of several government ministers, and the
support of some one-third of the parliamentary Labour Party for a motion
opposing the government’s policy, Blair remained steadfast in his
conviction that Ṣaddām was an imminent threat that had to be removed.
Following Ṣaddām’s ouster, however, British and American intelligence
was found to have been faulty. When no WMD were found, critics of the
government charged that it had distorted (‘‘sexed up’’) intelligence to
solidify its claims against the Iraqis. Nevertheless, in May 2005 Blair
won another term as prime minister—albeit with a significantly reduced
parliamentary majority—as Labour won its third consecutive general
election for the first time in the party’s history. The fallout from the
Iraq War—initially the controversy over the decision to go to war in the
first place and then the protracted involvement in a conflict that began
to look more and more like a civil war—sapped public and political
support for Blair. But, ever the consummate politician, he held on for
two years after his reelection despite the friction between himself and
his appointed successor, Gordon Brown, who became the new prime minister
in June 2007.

Brown’s hold on power was threatened in Spring 2009. With the British
economy already shaken by the spreading worldwide recession engendered
by the financial crisis of late 2008, a scandal broke involving many
dozens of members of Parliament who had extravagantly abused their
government expense accounts, including members of Brown’s cabinet. The
scandal and the troubled economy contributed to anemic performances by
the Labour Party in local elections in Britain and in those for the
European Parliament. Brown responded with a thorough reshuffle of his
cabinet and withstood a challenge to his leadership from within the
party in early June by promising to change his leadership style.

Society, state, and economy

State and societyDespite the so-called “dismantling of controls” after the end of World
War I, government involvement in economic life was to continue, as were
increased public expenditure, extensions of social welfare, and a higher
degree of administrative rationalization. In the interwar years the
level of integration of labour, capital, and the state was more
considerable than is often thought. Attempts to organize the market
continued up to the beginning of World War II, evident, for example, in
government’s financial support for regional development in the late
1930s. Few Britons, however, felt they were living in a period of
decreased government power. Nonetheless, attachment to the “impartial
state” and to voluntarism was still considerable and exemplified by the
popularity of the approved organizations set up to administer health
insurance in the interwar years. The governance of society through what
were now taken to be the social characteristics of that society itself,
for example, family life as well as demographic and economic
factors—developed by Liberal administrations before World War I—along
with the advent of “planning,” continued to be the direction of change,
but the connection back to Victorian notions of moral individualism and
the purely regulative, liberal state was still strong. Even the greatest
exponent of the move toward economic intervention and social government,
John Maynard Keynes, whose General Theory of Employment, Interest, and
Money (1935–36) provided the major rationale for subsequent state
intervention and whose work downgraded the importance of private
rationality and private responsibility, nonetheless believed that
governmental intervention in one area was necessary to buttress freedom
and privacy elsewhere, so that the moral responsibility of the citizen
would be forthcoming.

There was, however, only an incremental increase in the level of
interest in state involvement in the economy and society in the
immediate years before World War II, when the fear of war galvanized
politicians and administrators. It was the “total war” of 1939–45 that
brought a degree of centralized control of the economy and society that
was unparalleled before or indeed since. In some ways this was an
expression of prewar developments, but the impetus of the war was
enormous and felt in all political quarters. In 1941 it was a
Conservative chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, who
introduced the first Keynesian budget. Cross-party support was also
evident in the response to the 1942 Beveridge Report, which became the
blueprint of what was later to be called the welfare state. After 1945 a
decisive shift had taken place toward the recognition of state
intervention and planning as the norm, not the exception, and toward the
idea that society could now be molded by political will. Nonetheless,
there was much popular dislike of “government controls,” and the
familiar rhetoric of the impartial state remained strong, as reflected
in Beveridge’s attack in 1948 on the Labour government’s failure to
encourage voluntarism. This voluntarism, however, was decidedly
different from 19th-century voluntarism in that Beveridge advocated a
minister-guardian of voluntary action. So pervasive was the postwar
party consensus on the welfare state that the term coined to identify
it, “Butskellism,” is at least as well remembered as the successive
chancellors of the Exchequer—R.A. Butler and Hugh Gaitskell—from whose
amalgamated surnames it was derived.

From the 1960s onward this consensus began to unravel, with the
perception of poor economic performance and calls for the modernization
of British society and the British economy. The mixed economy came under
pressure, as did the institutions of the welfare state, especially the
National Health Service (NHS). In the 1970s in particular, older beliefs
in constitutional methods came into question—for instance, in the first
national Civil Service strike ever, in 1973, and in the strikes and
political violence that marked that decade as a whole. The result was a
revolution in the relationship between state and society, whereby the
market came to replace society as the model of state governance. This
did not, however, mean a return to 19th-century models, though the
character of this manifestation of the relationship between state and
society was clearly liberal, in line with the long British tradition of
governance.

Institutionally, this way of governing was pluralistic, but its
pluralism was decidedly statist. It was not, as in the 19th century, a
private, self-governing voluntarist pluralism but one that was
designedly competitive, enlisting quasi-governmental institutions as
clients competing with one another in a marketplace. In economic and
cultural conditions increasingly shaped by globalization, the economy
was exposed to the benign operations of the market not by leaving it
alone but by actively intervening in it to create the conditions for
entrepreneurship.

Analogously, social life was marketized too, thrown open to the idea
that the capacity for self-realization could be obtained only through
individual activity, not through society. Institutions like the NHS were
reformed as a series of internal markets. These markets were to be
governed by what has been called “the new public management.” This
involved a focus upon accountability, with explicit standards and
measures of performance. The ethical change involved a transition from
the idea of public service to one of private management of the self.
Parallel to this “culture of accountability” was the emergence of an
“audit society,” in which formal and professionally sanctioned
monitoring systems replaced the trust that earlier versions of
relationship between state and society had invested in professional
specialists of all sorts (the professions themselves, such as university
teaching, were opened up to this sort of audit, which was all the more
onerous because, if directed from above, it was carried out by the
professionals themselves, so preserving the fiction of professional
freedom).

The social state gave way to a state that was regarded as “enabling,”
permitting not only the citizen but also the firm, the locality, and so
on to freely choose. This politics of choice was in fact shared by the
Thatcher’s Conservative administration and Blair’s Labour one. In both
the state was seen as a partner. In the so-called “Third Way” of Blair,
one between socialism and the market, the partnership evolved much more
in terms of community than in the Conservative case. In Blair’s Labour
vision there was a more active concern with creating ethical citizens
who would exchange obligations for rights in a new realization of
marketized communities. This new relation of state and society involved
the decentralization of rule upon the citizen himself and herself, which
was reflected in the host of self-help activities to be found in the
Britain of the 1990s and 2000s, from the new concern with alternative
health therapies to the self-management of schools. Reflecting this
decentralization (in which the state itself made the citizen a consumer,
for instance, of education and health) was the increasingly important
role of the consumption of goods in constructing lifestyles through
which individual choice could realize self-expression and
self-fulfilment.

Economy and societyEconomically, Britain had been hurt severely by World War I. The huge
balances of credit in foreign currencies that had provided the capital
for the City of London’s financial operations for a century were spent.
Britain had moved from the position of a creditor to that of a debtor
country. Moreover, its industrial infrastructure, already out of date at
the start of the war, had been allowed to depreciate and decay further.
The industries of the Industrial Revolution, such as coal mining,
textile production, and shipbuilding, upon which British prosperity had
been built, were now either weakened or redundant. The Japanese had
usurped the textile export market. Coal was superseded by other forms of
energy. Shipping lost during the war had to be almost fully replaced
with more-modern and more-efficient vessels.

Finally, the Treaty of Versailles, particularly its harsh demands on
Germany for financial reparations, ensured that foreign markets would
remain depressed. Germany had been Britain’s largest foreign customer.
The export of German coal to France, as stipulated by the treaty, upset
world coal markets for nearly a decade. Depression and unemployment, not
prosperity and a better Britain, characterized the interwar years.

The British economy, as well as that of the rest of the world, was
devastated by the Great Depression. The post-World War I world of
reconstruction became a prewar world of deep depression, radicalism,
racism, and violence. Although MacDonald was well-meaning and highly
intelligent, he was badly equipped to handle the science of economics
and the depression. By the end of 1930, unemployment was nearly double
the figure of 1928 and would reach 25 percent of the workforce by the
spring of 1931. It was accompanied, after the closing of banks in
Germany in May, by a devastating run on gold in British banks that
threatened the stability of the pound.

MacDonald’s government fell in August over the protection of the
pound; Britain needed to borrow gold, but foreign bankers would lend
gold only on the condition that domestic expenditures would be cut, and
this meant, among other things, reducing unemployment insurance
payments. However, a Labour Party whose central commitment was to the
welfare of the working people could not mandate such a course of action
even in an economic crisis. Thus, the Labour cabinet resigned. MacDonald
with a few colleagues formed a coalition with the Conservative and
Liberal opposition on Aug. 24, 1931. This new “national” government,
which allowed Britain to go off the gold standard on September 21, was
confirmed in office by a general election on October 27, in which 473
Conservatives were returned while the Labour Party in the House of
Commons was nearly destroyed, capturing only 52 seats. MacDonald, who
was returned to the House of Commons along with 13 so-called National
Labour colleagues, remained prime minister nonetheless. The new
government was in fact a conservative government, and MacDonald, by
consenting to remain prime minister, became and remains in Labour
histories a traitor.

Under Neville Chamberlain, who became chancellor of the Exchequer in
November 1931, the coalition government pursued a policy of strict
economy. Housing subsidies were cut; Britain ended its
three-quarter-century devotion to free trade and began import
protection; and interest rates were lowered. Manufacturing revived,
stimulated particularly by a marked revival in the construction of
private housing made possible by reduced interest rates and by a modest
growth in exports as a result of the cheaper pound. Similarly,
unemployment declined, although it never reached the 10 percent level of
the late 1920s until after the outbreak of war.

In terms of the occupational structure of Britain, the aftermath of
World War I saw the decline of the great 19th-century staple industries
become increasingly sharp, and the interwar experience of textiles was
particularly difficult. The great expansion of mining after 1881 became
a contraction, particularly from the 1930s, and domestic service, which
itself may be termed a staple industry, suffered similarly. In 1911
these sectors accounted for some 20 percent of the British labour force,
but by 1961 they accounted for barely 5 percent. Manufacturing continued
to be of great importance into the third quarter of the century, when
the next great restructuring occurred. After World War I an increasing
emphasis on monopoly, scale, and sophisticated labour-management became
apparent in British industry, though there was still much of the old
“archaicism” of the 19th century to be seen, both in respect to
management practices and the entrenched power of certain skilled
occupations. Although different from its 19th-century antecedents, a
distinct sense of working-class identity, based on manual
work—especially in the manufacturing industry and mining—remained strong
until about 1960. This was buttressed by a considerable degree of
continuity in terms of residential community. After 1960 or so, the
wholesale development of slum clearance and relocation to new
residential settings was to go far to dissolve this older sense of
identity.

From the interwar years automobile manufacture, the manufacture of
consumer durables, and light industry, especially along the corridor
between London and Birmingham, as well as in the new industrial suburbs
of London, announced the economic eclipse of the north by the south, the
“south” here including South Wales and industrial Scotland. In the
Midlands electrical manufacturing and automobile industries developed.
In the south, in addition to construction industries, new service
industries such as hotels and the shops of London flourished. These in
particular offered employment opportunities for women at a time when the
demand for domestic servants was in decline. London grew enormously, and
the unemployment rate there was half that of the north of England and of
Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The effect of these developments
was to divide Britain politically and economically into two areas, a
division that, with the exception of an interval during World War II and
its immediate aftermath, still exists. New, science-based industries
(e.g., the electrical and chemical industries) also developed from the
interwar period, which together with the multiplication of service
industries and the growth of the public sector—despite repeated
government attempts to halt this growth—had by 1960 given rise to an
occupational structure very different from that of the 19th century.

On the surface the 1950s and early ’60s were years of economic
expansion and prosperity. The economic well-being of the average Briton
rose dramatically and visibly. But when prosperity created a demand for
imports, large-scale buying abroad hurt the value of the pound. A
declining pound meant higher interest rates as well as credit and import
controls, which in turn caused inflation. Inflation hurt exports and
caused strikes. These crises occurred in approximately three-year
cycles.

The economic concern then of the British government in the 1950s and
’60s and indeed through the 1970s was to increase productivity and
ensure labour peace so that Britain could again become an exporting
country able to pay for public expenditure at home while maintaining the
value of its currency and its place as a world banker. A drastic run on
the pound had been one of the pressing reasons for the quick withdrawal
from Suez in 1956, and throughout the 1950s and ’60s Britain’s share of
world trade fell with almost perfect consistency by about 1 percent per
year. On the other hand, Britain benefited from an unprecedented rise in
tourism occasioned mostly by the attraction of “Swinging London.”

All of this made Britain’s decision, after fierce political
discussion, not to join the planned EEC, established by the Treaty of
Rome on March 25, 1957, an event of signal importance. It meant that
although economic conditions in Britain did indeed improve in the last
years of the 1950s and through 1960—Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
could remark with only slight irony that the British people had never
“had it so good”—Britain nevertheless did not share in the astonishing
growth in European production and trade led by the “economic miracle” in
West Germany. By the mid-1960s there were signs that British prosperity
was declining. Increases in productivity were disappearing, and labour
unrest was marked. Prime Minister Macmillan quickly realized that it had
been a mistake not to join the EEC, and in July 1961 he initiated
negotiations to do so. By this time, however, the French government was
headed by Charles de Gaulle, and he chose to veto Britain’s entry.
Britain did not join the EEC until 1973.

In the aftermath of increasing difficulties for industry and
increasing labour conflict, the Thatcher governments after 1979 set
about a far-reaching restructuring of the economy, one based less on
economic than on political and moral factors. Thatcher set out to end
socialism in Britain. Her most dramatic acts consisted of a continuing
series of statutes to denationalize nearly every industry that Labour
had brought under government control in the previous 40 years as well as
some industries, such as telecommunications, that had been in state
hands for a century or more. But perhaps her most important achievement,
helped by high unemployment in the old heavy industries, was in winning
the contest for power with the trade unions. Instead of attempting to
put all legislation in one massive bill, as Heath had done, Thatcher
proceeded step by step, making secondary strikes and boycotts illegal,
providing for fines, as well as allocation of union funds, for the
violation of law, and taking measures for ending the closed shop.
Finally, in 1984–85, she won a struggle with the National Union of
Mineworkers (NUM), who staged a nationwide strike to prevent the closure
of 20 coal mines that the government claimed were unproductive. The
walkout, which lasted nearly a year and was accompanied by continuing
violence, soon became emblematic of the struggle for power between the
Conservative government and the trade unions. After the defeat of the
miners, that struggle was essentially over; Thatcher’s victory was aided
by divisions within the ranks of the miners themselves, exacerbated by
the divisive leadership of the militant NUM leader Arthur Scargill, and
by the Conservative government’s use of the police as a national
constabulary, one not afraid to employ violence. The miners returned to
work without a single concession. In all these efforts, Thatcher was
helped by a revival of world prosperity and lessening inflation, by the
profits from industries sold to investors, and by the enormous sums
realized from the sale abroad of North Sea oil. From 1974 the unexpected
windfall of the discovery of large oil reserves under the North Sea,
together with the increase in oil prices that year, transformed Britain
into a considerable player in the field of oil production (production
soared from 87,000 tons in 1974 to 75,000,000 tons five years later).
The political use of oil revenues was seen by some as characteristic of
the failure of successive British governments to put them to good
economic and social use.

The restructuring of the economy away from the manual and industrial
sectors, which was a consequence of the rapid decline of manufacturing
industry in Britain in the 1990s, also meant the decline of the old,
manual working class and the coming of what has been called
“postindustrial” or “postmodern” society. Within industry itself,
“post-Fordist” (flexible, technologically innovative, and demand-driven)
production and new forms of industrial management restructured the
labour force in ways that broke up traditional hierarchies and outlooks.
Not least among these changes has been the expansion of work, chiefly
part-time, for women. There has been a corresponding rise of new,
nonmanual employment, primarily in the service sector. In the early
phases of these changes, there was much underemployment and
unemployment.

The result has been not only the numerical decline of the old working
class but the diminishing significance of manual work itself, as well as
the growing disappearance of work as a fairly stable, uniform, lifelong
experience. The shift in employment and investment from production to
consumption industries has paralleled the rise of consumption itself as
an arena in which people’s desires and hopes are centred and as the
basis of their conceptions of themselves and the social order. However,
in the 1990s there was a considerable move back to the workplace as the
source of identity and self-value. At the same time, new management
practices and ideas developed that were in line with the still generally
high level of working hours.

Central to the new economy and new ideas about work has been the
staggering growth of information technology. This has been especially
evident in the operations of financial markets, contributing hugely to
their global integration. One of the great beneficiaries of these
changes has been the City of London, which has profited from very light
state regulation. The financial sector, in terms of international
markets and the domestic provision of financial goods and services, has
become a major sector of the new economy. Speculation in markets, with
ever-increasing degrees of ingenuity (for example, the phenomenon of
hedge fund trading), has helped create a cohort of the newly rich in
Britain and elsewhere. It has also led to an increasingly unstable world
financial system. The spoils of this new society have been divided
between large-scale multinational corporations and new kinds of
industrial organizations that are smaller and often more responsive to
demand, evident in development of the dot.com and e-commerce phenomena.
Internet shopping, along with the unparalleled development of giant
supermarket chains, transformed the traditional pattern of retailing and
shopping and, with it, patterns of social interaction. This, however,
was only one aspect of a general transformation of the economy and
society that even as recently as the early 1990s had hardly been
glimpsed.

In the conditions of economic stability and prosperity at the turn of
the 21st century, a relatively large middle group arose in terms of
income, housing, and lifestyle that politicians and others began to
refer to as ‘‘middle England.’’ In effect this meant Scotland and Wales
as well, although in Britain as a whole the old imbalance between west
and east continued, in a similar fashion to that between north and south
in England. However, even this middle was exposed to the vagaries of
financial markets and an underperforming welfare state. Moreover, the
gap between the least well-off and the most well-off widened even
further, so that alongside the new rich were the new poor, or
underclass. Social mobility either declined or stalled in comparison
with the 1960s—in particular, the capacity of the poorest parents to
send their children to university. Levels of poverty among children
continued to be high. The reborn postindustrial cities of the north and
Midlands, such as Manchester, came to symbolize much of the new Britain,
with their mixture of revitalized city centres and deprived city
perimeters that were home to the new poor. However, as had long been the
case, the economic centre of the country remained in London and the
southeast. Britain thus became a prosperous but increasingly unequal and
divided society.

Family and genderAfter World War I there was a further decline in the birth rate and a
continuing spread of contraception, though contraceptive methods had
been known and practiced by all sections of society for a considerable
time before this. What was important in the interwar years was a
development of contraceptive practices within marriage. The gradual
spread and acceptance of “family planning” was also important; however,
this acceptance was not usually seen in terms of women’s rights. The
birth rate continued to fall through the interwar years, and in the
1920s the two-child pattern of marriage was becoming established. With
it came the “nuclear family” structure that was to be characteristic of
much of the 20th century, with households predominantly made up of two
parents with children who on achieving adulthood will leave the home to
establish similar families themselves. Nonetheless, as always, there was
considerable variation in practice. Coresident kin and lodgers were
still found, particularly in working-class households, where
overcrowding was often marked, as it was in London after the disruptions
of World War II. There was also a concentration on childbirth within the
early years of marriage, as well as longer life expectancy for children
themselves.

Marriage was thus becoming a different kind of institution, at once
more intimate and private, as well as an arena in which individual
self-expression was becoming more possible than previously. In many
respects, the privacy that was possible for the better-off in society in
the mid- and late 19th century became increasingly possible for those
less well-off in the course of the 20th century. However, the privacy
that new kinds of family life and new economic possibilities made
possible for poorer people differed from middle-class privacy. It was
concerned with securing order and control of people’s lives in economic
conditions that were still often difficult. As a result, “working-class
respectability” differed from the respectability evident further up the
social scale. For instance, privacy was evident in the slowly increasing
possibility of separate rooms for separate functions (kitchens,
sculleries, and bathrooms, for example) and the development of
more-private sleeping arrangements. However, the respectability of this
private life was also public in that it was on show to neighbours as a
living proof of the family’s capacity to create order in difficult
lives: the elaborately presented front of the house and the purposefully
opened curtains of the “best room” of the home displayed the carefully
presented if precarious affluence of the family.

Nonetheless, despite material and cultural class differences, there
was a convergence across the social spectrum upon an increasingly common
privatized and nucleated family life. This was part of a much more
homogeneous life course and set of life experiences, which made the
population increasingly uniform, at least compared with that of the 19th
century. Age at marriage, the experience of marriage itself and of
running one’s own household, household size, and the similarity of the
age at which major life-cycle transitions occurred all tended to produce
more cultural uniformity than previously; this increasing uniformity was
of vast importance for the new consumer and media industries, not to
mention the political parties. The political culture was in fact
transformed from one based on class to a new sort of populist, demotic
politics, shaped at least as much by the mass media, especially the
popular press, as by the politicians.

The greater individualism possible within this more-privatized form
of marriage received expression in the growing incidence of divorce,
even as marriage itself grew greatly in importance in the 20th century.
By the 1970s almost every adult female married at least once, though
this figure fell considerably beginning in the 1980s. By 1997 one-third
of births occurred to parents not formally married; however, more than
half of these were to parents residing at the same address. The
phenomena of one-parent families, as well as of stable unmarried
cohabitation, now became widely apparent. If people married more often,
they divorced more frequently too, so that by the 1980s marriage
disruption rates by divorce were equal to those caused by death in the
19th century. By this time approximately one out of three marriages
ended in divorce. These changes were of profound significance for
politics in that, in the public and the political mind, they became
linked to the phenomena of antisocial behaviour by youth. Although this
link was in reality complex, it did not stop the Blair administration
from pursuing a ‘‘respect’’ agenda, which was designed to restore an at
least partly imagined former era of civic virtue and public order. The
ill-fated ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order), restricting the movement
of offenders, was celebrated by some as an appropriately strong response
to troublemaking neighbours and gangs but was condemned by others as an
attack on civil liberties.

Of course, these social changes also greatly affected the
understanding of women’s role in society. They were complemented by the
growth of women’s employment, particularly in part-time jobs and most
notably in the service sector, so that after 1945 a different life cycle
for women evolved that included the return to work after childbirth.
These changes did not result in the equality of earnings, however; for
example, despite the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, under which the
Equal Opportunities Commission was established, women’s pay rates in the
1980s were only about two-thirds of those of men. Still, higher
education was increasingly opened to women from the 1960s, so that by
1980 they formed 40 percent of admissions to universities, although, as
with male students, they were overwhelmingly from the higher social
classes. As part of the widespread movement toward greater
liberalization in the 1960s, in part inspired by developments in the
United States, women’s liberation also developed in Britain.

In turn, that movement gave rise to a whole range of feminisms, some
more radical than others but all aiming at the ingrained assumptions of
male superiority in employment practices, in education, and in the
understanding of family life itself. Intellectual life became
increasingly characterized by an explicitly feminist analysis, which led
to some fundamental rethinking in a whole range of academic disciplines,
though resistance to this was strong. Changes in patterns of employment
challenged stereotyped distinctions between the breadwinner and the
housewife, as well as stereotypical notions of life as a married couple
being based upon a well-understood division of labour within the
household. The phenomena of the ‘‘new man’’ developed, though his
progeny of the 1990s, the ‘‘new lad,’’ was not quite what his father had
expected. Coined to describe what was in fact a reinvented, consumer-led
version of a long-held and ingrained masculine worldview, ‘‘laddism’’
turned out to be a snazzier, more fashion-driven, and above all more
unashamed version of the old devotion to ‘‘birds’’(women), beer, and
football (soccer).

Mass culture In terms of popular leisure, music hall declined in popularity in the
second quarter of the 20th century, but it left its mark on much of
British culture, not least on the motion picture, which hastened its
demise, and on television, which followed its end. By 1914 there were
4,000 cinemas in Britain and about 400,000,000 admissions per year. By
1934 this had more than doubled, and admissions continued to rise
steadily to reach a peak of 1.6 billion in 1946. This was a particularly
popular form of entertainment, especially among the working class: the
lower down the social scale one was, the more likely one was to visit
the cinema. The suburban middle-class motion picture audience of the
1930s was important but remained a minority. It is difficult to
exaggerate the dominance of the cinema as a form of entertainment. In
1950, out of over 1,500,000 admissions to forms of taxable entertainment
(and this included horse racing and football matches), cinema made up
more than 80 percent. Hollywood films dominated, though until World War
II there was a thriving British film industry. This domination continued
after the war, although British cinema asserted itself powerfully from
time to time; for instance, in the Social Realism of the 1960s, notably
in the work of director Lindsay Anderson, and later in the films of Ken
Loach and Mike Leigh. Parallel to these artful dissections of British
life were the less high-minded but extremely successful ‘‘Carry On’’
comedies, which drew on the music hall tradition.

Reading matter continued to be produced within Britain, above all in
the form of the newspaper. The British are inveterate newspaper readers,
and there was mass consumption of a nationally based daily and Sunday
newspaper press as early as the 1920s. This did much to create cultural
uniformity, although, as with motion pictures, there were considerable
differences of taste and preference regarding newspapers. However, after
1950 the emphasis on uniformity became more marked and was reinforced by
the progressive concentration of ownership in the hands of a few
proprietors. This circle of ownership became even smaller as time went
on, so that at the beginning of the 21st century the empire of the most
powerful of these media moguls, Rupert Murdoch, not only dominated much
of the popular press and made considerable inroads into the so-called
quality press in Britain but was also international in scope.
Newspapers, however, were but one component of Murdoch’s and similar
empires. The revolution wrought by new information technologies put
control of a wide variety of communication forms, most importantly
television, in the hands of these powerful individuals. Their political
influence swelled as politicians of all persuasions were compelled to
accommodate their power and, in a form of spin, play their version of
the political game.

The development of a national mass culture seen in the previous
period, in which the distinction between “popular” and “high” culture,
if still important, was to some extent bridged, was to continue into the
20th and 21st centuries. (Cultural homogeneity was also intensified by
increasing social and lifestyle uniformity.) To a considerable extent,
from the 1960s, all culture became popular culture, so that differences
of gender, class, and ethnicity became if not merged then renegotiated
in terms of a mass, “shared” culture. In this process, the older class
differences were eroded, in line with other changes in class structure,
particularly in the manual working class. At the same time, new
differences and solidarities also emerged, particularly around age and
levels of consumption.

Popular music—or pop music, as it came to be called from the
1960s—became an important area in which identities were formed. Pop has
modulated through many forms since the 1960s, from the punk of the late
’70s and early ’80s to hip-hop and the rave culture of the ’90s, and
distinct styles of life have accreted around these musical forms, not
only for the youth. The development of a uniform popular culture, at
least as expressed through popular music, was greatly beholden to
similar developments in the United States, where social identities were
explored and developed in terms of black popular music, not just by
African Americans but also by young white Americans. Given the great
importance of Afro-Caribbean immigration into Britain after 1945, and
latterly south Asian immigration, the experience of ethnic minorities in
Britain to some degree also paralleled that of the United States.
Concerns about national identity, as well as personal and group
identity, became more important as Britain became a multicultural
society and as the growth of European integration and economic
globalization increasingly called British—and English, Welsh, and
Scottish—identity into question.

The liberalization of the 1960s appears to have been crucial for many
of these changes, with shifting gender roles being only one part of a
broader international agenda. The civil rights movement in Ireland,
student protest, and the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements in
the United States were all part of the assault on the still-strong
vestiges of Victorianism in British society, as well as, more
immediately, a reaction against the austerity of postwar Britain. Change
in family life and sexual mores was represented in the 1960s by a range
of legislative developments: the Abortion Act of 1967; the Sexual
Offences Act of 1967, partially decriminalizing homosexual activity; the
1969 Divorce Reform Act; and the abolition of theatre censorship in
1968. (Moreover, debate concerning sexual mores continued in Britain
throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, not least regarding the
ongoing attempts to change the legal age of consent and the
controversial Section 28 Amendment to the Local Government Act in 1988,
which prohibited local authorities from promoting homosexuality.)

Change was also based on the relative economic affluence of the late
1950s and ’60s. The disintegration of older values (including middle
class values) was evident in the “rediscovery” of the working class, in
which films, novels, plays, and academic works depicted working-class
life with unparalleled realism and unparalleled sympathy (including the
works of the Angry Young Men). The working class was therefore brought
into the cultural mainstream. This was ironic at a time when
working-class communities were in fact being broken apart by slum
clearance and the relocation of populations away from the geographical
locations of their traditional culture.

Changes in higher education, with the development of the polytechnics
and the “new universities,” meant that, at least to some extent, higher
education was thrown open to children from poorer homes. There was also
the liberalization of educational methods in primary and secondary
education, along with the emergence of comprehensive schooling, ending
the old distinction between the secondary modern and the grammar
schools. In practice, many of the old divisions continued and, indeed,
increased. However, rather than being accompanied by increasing cultural
divisions, the opposite was the case. There was a much more positive
understanding of the “popular” than before. A more fluid, open, and
commercial popular culture was signalled by the development in the 1950s
of commercial television and, with it, the slow decline of the public
broadcasting, public service ethic of the BBC. With the explosion of new
channels of communication in the 2000s, particularly in television,
there was a noted ‘‘dumbing down’’ of all media, which was especially
evident in the celebrity culture of the new century and not unique to
the United Kingdom. The new television gorged on this, as well as on
reality programming and on the enormously increased popularity of
professional football. These brought all classes together in a new
demotic culture, although at the same time differentiation according to
income, taste, and education became increasingly possible because of the
technologies of the new media.

The various lifestyles associated with different genres of popular
music are one telling indication of the way that lifestyle can determine
an individual’s identity in modern society. This development reflects
the withdrawal of the state from the direct intervention in social life
that was so characteristic of the third quarter of the 20th century. The
state’s turn to the market as a model of government has been reproduced
in terms of the market’s direct role in the formation of cultural life,
so that the relationship between public culture and consumer capitalism
has been close, in many ways the one constantly trying to outguess the
other. This game of one-upmanship, marked by ironic knowingness, has
been labelled “postmodern.” However, this term has come to describe much
of late 20th- and early 21st-century international culture and society,
not only in Britain. It points to the growing understanding of the
relative nature of truth, itself a reaction against the prevailing
supposedly “modern” certainties of the 20th century (reason, freedom,
humanity, and truth itself), which indeed have often had an appalling
outcome. However, it was a sign of the times that these
antifundamentalist currents, themselves critical of much of Western
culture, emerged at much the same time as new fundamentalisms emerged in
the forms of American neoconservatism and certain strains of radical
Islam. The ferment of intellectual and cultural changes involved was
inextricable from the massive changes under way in the transition to the
novel forms of society made possible by new information technologies.

Patrick Joyce

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